


Conflagration

by Nova_Raven



Series: Being Blind [3]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Blind Character, Blindness, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Brolby - Freeform, Established Relationship, Fire, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Haunting Investigations, Homophobia, M/M, Nazis, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27788662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nova_Raven/pseuds/Nova_Raven
Summary: Colby and Brennen take another trip to a haunted building.  However, this one may have more lurking beneath the surface than a simple haunting...
Relationships: Colby Brock/Brennen Taylor
Series: Being Blind [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612918
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

“And you’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“Brennen, if you ask me one more time I’m going to hit you with my cane.”

He heard Brennen chuckle next to him, and then there was a hand on his thigh, a comforting gesture. “Wouldn’t recommend that in the car,” Brennen said jokingly, as if Colby would actually hit him intentionally with his cane.

Well… yeah he would. If Brennen said something stupid enough.

“Lucky for you,” Colby rolled his eyes, lifting the water bottle in front of his eyes again. If he held it in front of a light source, especially light coming through a windshield, the light bouncing off of the moving water was enough for his eyes to pick up on. And Colby found himself seeking visual stimulation without even really thinking about it these days.

Because it had been almost a year and a half since he went blind, and he was okay with it. But his eyes still liked to see  _ something _ …. Water moving in plastic water bottles was an easy way to make his eyes and brain happy.

Brennen didn’t comment on it. He’d remind Colby if they were in public, somewhere where staring at his water bottle would be weird, but as they were driving alone in a car together on the way to a haunted house, Colby doing his little blind tics wasn’t really a problem.

“‘Sides,” Colby pointed out, “It was mostly my idea. I was the one who got the email.”

“I mean, I guess.” He could almost hear the shrug in Brennen’s voice, and he smiled to himself. He still appreciated that Brennen always asked anytime he was planning on using Colby’s blindness as an element of a video. Because it was Brennen, and after everything they had been through together, Colby could never see Brennen taking advantage of it in any way.

Some people did, and that sucked once he figured it out, but he was getting better at figuring out who that was… and calling them out on it.

“Anyway,” Brennen continued, “I’m pretty fuckin’ excited to check this place out. You said it was like a cult leader’s home or something?” Colby heard Brennen shift the camera.

They’d ended up setting up a camera stand on the dashboard. It allowed Brennen to drive, but still let him direct the camera as needed for footage. Because as they’d both learned after an early video attempt, Colby couldn’t aim a camera very well anymore.

The camera was on. They’d just take the footage and edit it as needed.

“Kinda,” Colby nodded, still watching his water bottle. “I’m not sure the owner was like, a cult leader, but I think they had like, a bunch of rituals there. And there were some pretty fucked up ones in what I read up on. Human sacrifice and shit.” The websites he’d been able to find weren’t always great for his screen reader, but he’d gotten the gist of what had gone down.

“Shit,” He heard an exhale from Brennen. “What were they trying to do? Summon demons?”

“I don’t think so,” Colby said, letting the water bottle rest in his lap. “It had something to do with purifying the human race. Kinda like Nazi shit.” That part had been where his software had the most difficulty. He’d had to navigate off of that site because the formatting made it impossible to decipher without sight. And Brennen had been out of town so he hadn’t had the chance to ask his boyfriend to translate for him.

He heard a disgusted noise from Brennen. “That’s pretty fucked up, dude.”

“Right?” Colby closed his eyes briefly, leaning back in the chair. “So lots of unhappy spirits there, I’m sure.” Lots of stuff to hear and feel. Lots of opportunities to take advantage of the heightened awareness a lack of sight gave him.

And hopefully, a lot of good footage.

The GPS chirped directions, and he felt the car make a turn. The vehicle jolted a little bit as it rolled onto a dirt road from the pavement, and Colby’s eyes opened to look out the windshield and see what little he could see. The bright early afternoon sun that had been streaming through the window was muted, so Colby guessed there were probably trees or something else blocking it. The shifting light out the windshield momentarily distracted him, so he didn’t realize the car was slowing until Brennen spoke.

“Holy shit…” He heard Brennen mutter, “That’s a big fuckin’ house…”. The car crunched on the dirt road, and Colby thought that he could vaguely make out the outline of something dark outlined in light.

“What does it look like?”

“Like… one of those Victorian style mansions,” Brennen said, but he sounded distracted. The car slowed further. “There’s a gate and it’s not open. Are we supposed to park out here, or…”

“Oh, the caretaker said I was supposed to call him when we got here,” Colby remembered, fishing his phone out of his pocket and quietly instructing it to call the caretaker, a man by the name of Hansel.

As he held the phone to his ear, hearing the dial tone as Brennen pulled the car to a stop. Brennen put a hand on Colby’s free one, squeezing it lightly, and Colby smiled in Brennen’s direction.

He’d never get sick of the little gestures of affection.

“Hello?” He heard an older voice on the other end of the phone. It sounded… almost wary, and that was something that immediately set Colby’s stomach on edge.

“Uh, hello, this is Colby Brock?” He said, trying not to betray his emotions in his voice. “I’m staying the night tonight? I uh, I think we’re at the gate?”

“Oh! Yes, yes!” The voice changed almost immediately, excitement seeming to fill the German-accented voice. “I will let you in. Just a moment!”

Colby heard movement on the other side of the phone, sounding like rapidly moving footsteps. “He’s gonna let us in,” Colby explained quietly to Brennen.

“Chill,” Brennen said, but now there was unease in his voice. He sounded distracted, and Colby squeezed his hand.

“What’s up?” He felt like there was something visual he was missing.

Brennen didn’t speak for a moment, but when he did, his voice was quiet. “This place is like… weird…” Brennen muttered, squeezing Colby’s hand back. There was still movement on the other side of Colby’s phone, and a couple of muttered words in German, but most of Colby’s attention was on Brennen. “Like… So like, at first glance, it looks normal. Like, old, but normal old,” Brennen explained, “But now that I’m looking at it more… I dunno, dude, it’s creepy. There are things that are just... off. I’m not sure if it’s the proportions or colors or…”

Colby grimaced, wishing, not the first time, that he could see what Brennen was talking about. Because he loved Brennen, but Brennen wasn’t always great at explaining visual things. Of all their friends, Kat was actually the best at explaining visual things to him. “Weird,” He commented instead, looking out the windshield to see if he could see anything for himself.

What he did see was a shifting of the light as the sound of metal on metal filled the air. The gate must be opening. “You can pull up to the house and I will meet you!” He heard Hansel’s voice in his ear.

“Okay, thank you!” Colby responded, pulling the phone from his ear and feeling the car start to move again as Brennen drove onto the property. Colby could tell Brennen was still uneasy, but he drove forward anyway, and it was only a few moments later when the car pulled to a stop.

“Alright,” Brennen said, “Old guy standing at the front door. I assume that’s Hansel?”

“Probably,” Colby shrugged, moving to exit the car. He unfolded his cane, opening the door and testing the ground with it before hopping out and pulling his backpack over his shoulder. He closed the door, hearing Brennen free the camera and then move from the driver’s spot and towards him.

“Hello,” He heard Hansel, his voice clearer than it had been on the phone, and turned his face towards the voice.

“Hello,” He responded, still tracking Brennen with his ears. “How are you?”

“I am fine, and yourself?”

“Glad to be out of the car,” Colby joked, reaching out for Brennen and feeling his boyfriend press against his hand, letting Colby slip a hand around his upper arm. Brennen stepped forwards with him, around the car and towards Hansel.

“Oh yes, you came from LA,” Hansel said, “It is a long drive.”

“Only about four hours,” Colby felt Brennen shrug, and his cane warned him of incoming stairs. “Hi, I’m Brennen.”

“And I’m Colby,” Colby introduced himself as well, “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“And I am Hansel. The pleasure is all mine,” The caretaker said, genuinely sounding pleased to meet them. “I am glad to have you here.”

“We’re excited to be here,” Colby said.

“Come in, come in,” Colby heard a door open as Hansel spoke, “You can get settled and then we can talk about the house, yes?”

“Yeah, yeah, sounds good,” Brennen agreed, and together, they moved into the house.

For not being able to see, Colby found it interesting how much about new buildings that he was able to pick up. The front doors opened, and Colby could immediately hear how the sound bounced around the entry room. He tapped his cane a few times as Brennen led him forward, able to hear the way the sharp sound bounced back at him.

There was clearly a lot of stuff going on in front of him. The room sounded large and open, with a deeper sort of resonance that spoke of wooden walls and floors. Most of his vision dimmed with a transition inside, but there were still bright patches, and he picked out lights that might have been windows or lightbulbs. They were spread apart, confirming even more the size of the room.

Brennen’s muttered, “Holy shit,” All but confirmed it.

“What’s it look like?” Colby asked, and he’d gotten used to asking Brennen shit like this, almost not even bitter he couldn’t see it himself.

“Uh, lots of dark wood,” Brennen confirmed his earlier theory. “Room opens up to the left, and there’s a staircase in front of us. Lots of paintings and chandeliers. Looks really cool, man.”

Colby snorted, “Glad you’ve got something interesting to look at.”

“Worse comes to worse I can always look at you,” Brennen shot back at him, and Colby grinned, squeezing Brennen’s forearm. “Stairs.”

Brennen warned him a moment before Colby’s cane impacted something, likely the stairs by Brennen’s warning. He heard Hansel’s footsteps change gait in front of him, the man leading the way up the stairs. Colby tucked closer to Brennen, letting his boyfriend guide him.

Brennen started asking questions as they climbed, “So, how old is this place?”

“It was built in 1863 by my family,” Hansel answered, and Colby felt his eyes widen. He hadn’t realized their guide was related to the owners of the house.

“Wow, really?” Colby asked, “So, this is your place, then?”

“Yes,” Hansel said, and his voice had moved off to the left of Colby, so he wasn’t too surprised when Brennen’s quiet murmur warned him they were at the top of the stairs. “It has been passed down to me, from my grandfather. It is mostly unchanged from its original architecture.”

“Except there’s plumbing now, right?” Brennen tossed the joke, and Colby extended his cane out in front of him again as Brennen led them.

He heard Hansel’s quiet chuckle. “Yes, the house now has toilets.”

“Cool, not a huge fan of outhouses,” Brennen chirped back. They paused for a moment, “Oh, I see it, bathroom’s here, wow. Was this a closet first?”

“As they were not part of the original design we made do with what we had,” Colby heard Hansel’s response, but Brennen was also murmuring in his ear.

“It’s about four feet deep. Sink is to the left, toilet to the right.”

“Thanks.”

“And your rooms are down this way…” Hansel’s footsteps walked away again, and Brennen and Colby followed.

“You hearing anything?” Brennen asked quietly, but Colby just shook his head.

“Nothing so far.”

“Damn…” Brennen’s voice sounded distracted, “Something’s off about this place, man. I don’t like it.”

Colby grit his teeth. “Something visual?” Because he hadn’t noticed anything but then… there was a whole sense he was missing.

Brennen hesitated, then Colby felt him shrug, “The wall coloring is like… weird, and there’s like… a bunch of creepy old photos on the walls up here. Feels like they’re watching me.”

Colby pressed his lips together. “Maybe they’re just old.”

“Maybe…” But Brennen didn’t sound entirely convinced.

They pulled to the right, and Colby heard a door open. “We have one room here,” Hansel’s voice came from the door, “And another across the hallway. You two may take whichever you like. This one looks out on the courtyard, and this one on the lawn.” Colby was sure there was pointing involved in those directions.

“We’ll take the courtyard one,” Brennen made the call, and Colby followed him with practiced ease through the door, trying to note the pathway from the bathroom to the bedroom.

“Oh, you do not only have to take one,” Hansel said, “There is only one bed in each room, unfortunately.”

“How big is it?” Colby asked, at the same time that Brennen answered, “It’s a queen, we usually share one of those, don’t worry about it.”

“You share a bed?” And Colby’s couldn’t see Hansel’s face but that tone… he definitely didn’t like.

Instantly, he felt Brennen stiffen next to him. “Yeah,” Brennen said lowly, “Is that gonna be a problem?”

“No, no,” Hansel said quickly, “I was simply surprised.” There was an awkward silence for a few moments, or maybe it wasn’t, Colby just heard the few moments of dead air. “Well, I will let you get settled here then, and then I will meet you in the foyer for a house tour?”

“Sounds good,” Colby said, before Brennen could say anything to the contrary. “We won’t take long.” He let go of Brennen to slip the backpack from his shoulders.

“Good, good,” He heard Hansel’s answer, and then the sound of footsteps and the closing of a door.

“He didn’t know we were dating?” That was the first question that came from Brennen’s lips.

“I mean, with the whole blind thing sometimes people don’t figure it out for a bit,” Colby offered, tapping his way carefully around the room, trying to mental map it. “I kinda have an excuse to always be touching you.”

“Yeah, but he made a face,” Brennen muttered, and Brennen hadn’t moved with Colby as he found a desk in the corner, or maybe a dresser. He then navigated along the wall to a bright patch in his vision.

Colby sighed, and his fingers landed on glass so he knew he’d found the window, probably overlooking the courtyard. “You know, he’s probably just like… old. And not used to it. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve run into that.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t see his face,” Brennen muttered again, and Colby let out a bark of a laugh.

“Yeah, I didn’t. I’m blind.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Brennen groaned, and Colby heard him finally move, heard something land on the bed, and then heard footsteps moving towards him. “I mean, he looked-”. And Brennen’s comment abruptly cut off when he came behind Colby’s shoulder. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Again, blind.”

“No, fuck dammit,” Brennen grumbled, “There’s someone out in the courtyard just standing there. Another dude.”

Colby frowned, “Not Hansel?”

“No, this guy’s got brown hair.” Colby was pretty sure that Brennen was looking at him by the direction change of his voice, “Thought we were gonna be alone out here.”

“Me too,” Colby said honestly, “But uh… I guess there’s nothing really like, wrong with there being other people, right? Maybe he has like, staff. This is a really big place.”

“Maybe…” Brennen tucked into Colby’s back, and Colby felt a chin on his shoulder. He leaned back into the contact, feeling a smile pull across his face.

But worry still sat heavy across his shoulders. “You think we should leave?” Because that was really what he needed to know. Did Brennen not feel safe to stay here?

Brennen was quiet for a moment, but Colby felt the faint shake of his head on his shoulder. “It’s not… I’m not there yet,” Brennen said. “We’ll just uh… be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Colby agreed, turning his body slightly to kiss Brennen on the cheek. Brennen shifted the second time so that he could meet Colby’s lips. Colby grinned, letting a soft laugh fall from his lips as he settled back into Brennen. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Brennen said. He squeezed Colby against him one last time, murmuring, “We should go see Hansel, huh?”

“Yeah,” Colby agreed. But he was curious about the other man Brennen had seen, asking, “Is that guy still there?”

Brennen made a short negative hum. “No, he’s gone. At least, he walked away.”

“Huh,” Colby shrugged. “Probably just a gardener. Lots of plants out there?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Brennen conceded. “It’s actually pretty big. Like Hansel probably isn’t maintaining that himself.”

“Cool,” Colby shifted, tucking his hand around Brennen’s forearm again and gripping his cane. “Let’s go.”

“Alright.”

That was when Colby heard something move. He paused, pulling Brennen to a stop and cocking his head to the side to listen.

“You heard something?” Brennen knew his body language, and he knew his boyfriend was looking at him.

Colby frowned, but the sound was gone again. “Thought I did,” He said, “But uh… it’s gone now.”

“What was it?” 

“Sounded like something moved.” He let his head relax. “It’s gone now.” He squeezed Brennen’s hand, “We should go.”

As they made their way downstairs again, Brennen tried to point out the bathroom again. Except that apparently the room he pointed out wasn’t the bathroom, and Colby had thought they were supposed to go left out of their bedroom but Brennen could see so he’d just followed the guy with the sight, until Brennen let out a noise of frustration, and turned around.

“Fuck.”

“You went the wrong way?”

“I went the wrong way.”

Colby grinned a little, “You know, I’d thought you did but you’re the guy with the sight so…”

“Shut the fuck up.” They started backtracking, Colby trying to keep a vague idea of the turns. “Okay, here’s our room, shit…”

“Left out the door?”

“Left out the door,” Brennen confirmed with a groan. “Fuck, I didn’t think there was this much of this place…”

Colby squeezed his forearm, “Then you may have to deal with me waking you up if I have to piss tonight. Don’t really wanna get lost.” He grimaced. There had been another ghost trip where Colby had tried to get to the bathroom without waking Brennen. It should have been a straight shot but Colby hadn’t anticipated the flooring of the older building they were in and had ended up lost with a turned ankle.

He’d traced his way back to their room with a limp, and red face, and a still full bladder. He had no desire to repeat that.

“Hey man, no worries,” Brennen said, “If I can’t keep this place straight then there’s no way- Oh, there’s the creepy family photo, I know where we are.”

And it wasn’t too much longer before Colby heard the tighter sounds of the corridor open up into the higher ceiling of the stairwell. They made their way down the stairs without too much trouble, and Colby heard someone shifting downstairs before the man opened his mouth.

“I am very sorry for my reaction earlier, to you two,” Hansel said quickly, “I swear I do not… it does not bother me. I was simply unaware of your relationship.”

“Hey, it’s good, man,” Colby said, pushing a grin to his face before Brennen could say anything, “The blind thing throws a lot of people off.” Brennen shifted next to him, but he didn’t contradict Colby.

“I… yes,” Hansel seemed to agree. “If I… if I may ask about that…”

“Yeah, sure.” Because he’d gotten pretty used to questions about his blindness by now.

“Do you…” Hansel seemed unsure how to ask his question, “Do you see  _ anything _ ?”

Colby chuckled, because it was always that question. “Not much. But I can see some light levels. Like windows during the day and brighter lights.”

“It is not all black?” And that was another common question.

So Colby shook his head. “No, I still see some stuff. Just not much. Lights, mostly.” Which he was still grateful for. Because losing most of his vision had been hard enough. He couldn’t imagine a world where he truly saw  _ nothing _ .

He’d lose his fucking mind.

“And you lost your sight in a car accident, yes?”

Colby felt Brennen tense next to him, figured something visual must have passed between the two of them because Hansel quickly said, “I am sorry, I should not have asked-”

“No, it’s good,” Colby squeezed Brennen’s upper arm with some force, non-verbally warning his boyfriend to play nice. “Yeah, head injury screwed up my eyes.”

“That must have been very difficult,” Hansel said, and Colby grit his teeth.

Because yeah, it had been. But this didn’t feel like the place or time to be super open about that. “It was, but uh… I figured it out.” He tried to push a smile to his face. “Wasn’t going to let it stop me.”

“This is good,” Hansel agreed. “And Brennen helps you? Forgive me that I did not realize the nature of your relationship.”

“Hey, it’s good, a lot of people don’t,” Colby said, trying to “look” at Hansel, “Cause like, we’re dating but uh... actually most of this touching you see is because I can’t see and I need him to help me get around new places.” Something he’d mostly accepted as something he needed now.

Mostly.

“Not that I mind,” Brennen said, leaning briefly into Colby. And Colby knew that, knew in his heart that Brennen truly didn’t mind any of the adaptations to his life that he’d added because of Colby’s disability.

Didn’t mean Colby didn’t still have issues with it from time to time. 

“Very interesting,” Hansel said musingly.

Colby shifted a little on his feet, shifting his gaze downward. He was ready to stop talking about his blindness now, not having expected to get this in depth about it. He talked about it quite a bit, but it was still emotionally a lot. Especially as he hadn’t been expecting this conversation.

Fortunately, Brennen knew his body language. Colby heard Hansel take another breath as if to ask another question, but Brennen cut him off first. “So, we read some stuff about this house’s history? Things that might lead to it being haunted? Could you talk about that a bit?”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” Hansel said, “Come. I will show you around.” Colby heard footsteps in front of him that walked away from him, letting Brennen take the lead after him.

“Thanks…” Colby murmured softly, knowing Brennen would know what he meant.

“Sure thing, babe.”

“So, I mentioned that this house was built in 1863, yes?” Hansel started, and Brennen and Colby followed him to the left of the entryway.

“Yeah,” Colby confirmed. He felt Brennen shift, imagined he was panning the camera around the room. It was what Colby would have done previously. “So where are we?” He could see bright spots that were probably windows in his vision, and the flooring under his feet changed, Colby thinking that it might be carpet.

“This is the dining room,” Hansel explained, “The table is actually the original table from when the house was built.”

“Okay, that’s really cool,” Brennen said, and Colby felt his cane impact something, “Table,” Brennen warned him, “But like, you gotta feel this wood, dude. It looks really cool.”

“Is it okay if I touch it?” Colby turned his head to where he last remembered hearing Hansel, knowing that sometimes people were weird about Colby putting his hands on things. Of course, it was very a blind thing to want to touch it but it really did help him understand things.

“Certainly,” Hansel answered, and Colby felt Brennen take a few steps and place the hand of the arm Colby was holding onto something. Colby slid his hand down Brennen’s arm to touch something smooth and solid feeling.

This must be the table.

“Watch for the chairs,” He heard Brennen warn him as he detached from Brennen, running the tips of his fingers casually across the wood. He could feel the gnarls of the wood used to make the table under his fingers, the solidness of the material. As he slid his fingers along the edge, Colby could feel the indents in the wood where the chairs met the table from years of meals.

“This is a really nice table,” He said, reaching out an arm for Brennen. His boyfriend slid back into his reach almost immediately. He turned his face towards Brennen, “Does it have some sort of dark history?”

He heard a chuckle from Hansel. “I was curious when you were going to ask about that.”

“Well, the haunting’s half the reason we’re here so…” Colby felt Brennen’s shrug. “Anything… spooky, happen in this room?”

“How much do you know about the house?” Hansel’s voice seemed to take on a slightly more serious tone, the slight german accent adding a certain air to the room. Colby took the opportunity to listen, wondering if there would be any sounds now that they were talking about the real reason they had come to the house.

“I read some stuff about some rituals that were done here?” Colby offered, “Something about Nazis?”

“Ah yes…” Hansel said, and he sounded regretful, “A… darker part, of my family’s history.”

“Your family were Nazis?” Brennen asked, sounding frankly abhorred. Colby squeezed his arm, once again passing on a subtle,  _ be nice… _ He shivered a little bit, out of nowhere.

Felt like the temperature in the room had dropped a bit.

“It is not so simple,” Hansel said, “My parents were not Nazis, however, in the aftermath of the second great war, we had family members who could not remain in Germany, due to their involvement with the party. They knew my grandfather owned this house here, in America, and fled.” His tone darkened, “This is where the house’s history is tainted.”

“My grandfather was a good man, a very good man, and he could not say no to his family…” His voice held some light passion. “And at the time… he did not know of how bad it had been in Germany, and the beliefs that our family brought with them…” Colby heard footsteps, identifying them as Hansel’s. “Come, I will show you the next room.”

Brennen pressed closer to Colby as they started walking again. He heard Brennen fiddle with the camera, then murmur, “Hearing anything?”

Colby shook his head, “Nothing.”

“Damn.”

“Where are we going?” Colby had to pull the cane in closer to his body with all of the furniture.

“Looks like a living room? There’s a- holy shit, that’s a big fireplace. Big and brick, in the middle of the room. There’s couches, more portraits and photos on the walls. Big ol’ bookcase too, like, takes up the whole wall.”

But Colby’s brain was prone to connections, and the previous Nazi conversation with the mention of a fireplace… “Okay, so this is fucked, but like… Not a big enough fireplace for a human body, right?”

He heard Brennen’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh fuck that, no.”

“Sorry…” Colby apologized, but Brennen hummed a short negative.

“You’re good, man, you can’t see it.” Brennen pulled him to a stop. “So, Hansel, what happened after your grandfather took those guys in?”

Colby could hear some of the hesitance in Hansel’s voice when he continued. “At first, they were perfect house guests, and for many months, my grandfather did not suspect that anything was wrong. They seemed to be adjusting to life in America, they had friends over for dinner, they were always polite.” He paused, “And then, and then he realized what was going on while he slept.”

“What was going on?” Colby was admittedly hooked to the story. It was like something out of a horror movie.

There was a long pause, and Colby wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Hansel seemed reluctant to tell them something. “Is this where the ritual sacrifice stuff comes in?” Brennen asked.

“Yes…” Hansel admitted. Colby heard some nervous shuffling, “You must understand that these individuals were part of a rather extreme group, who believed that by sacrificing… unsavory individuals to God, that the earth would be cleansed of the impure and left to the master race.”

“They must have loved Hitler,” Brennen commented, and Colby heard Hansel’s sound of agreement.

“Yes…” Hansel said, “They believed that the slaughter that Hitler did was all in the name of sacrifice to God.”

Colby shuddered. Because while he’d definitely call himself a Christian… his beliefs had nothing to do with any of that. “Jeez…” He muttered, “That’s fucked up.”

“I agree,” Hansel said quickly, “I believe that, had my grandfather truly known what was going on in his house he would not have tolerated it but… he did not realize it until a truly unfortunate incident.”

“What happened?” Why was Hansel being so cagey? He felt Brennen shift against him.

Hansel sounded uncomfortable when he next spoke. “My grandfather was a good man, however… he did have some prejudices, as a man of his time did. And so he noticed when his house guests brought a- homosexual couple to the house.”

Colby stiffened, not liking the sound of this at all. Next to him, Brennen did the same. They both seemed to instinctively know that this did not end well. “Oh?” Colby was pretty impressed with how even his voice came out. Maybe because he couldn’t see Brennen or Hansel’s faces to react off of them.

“He expressed his… displeasure, at the men being there, and so this time he was invited along to the ritual,” Hansel explained. “As I’m sure you can imagine, that was not a pleasant experience.”

“Probably less so for the dead guys,” Brennen said tightly, and Colby could feel the defensive tension that made his body rigid. Colby leaned into him, trying to provide them both some kind of comfort.

“I am sorry, for that element of the story,” Hansel said, “Please know I mean nothing by it.”

“No, it’s uh… it’s good, dude,” Colby said, “Is that when your grandfather finally reported them?”

“Yes,” Hansel said, and he seemed relieved to be getting to that part of the story. “That is when he took care of them and their… horrible actions... were put to an end.”

“So like… how many people died here?” Brennen asked, “Like, how many people did they kill?”

“I believe somewhere between twenty and thirty,” Hansel said. There was quiet for a moment, a fairly uncomfortable silence. At least, it was for Colby. He wasn’t sure what to say. So not only were there multiple people killed here but… some of them might have been like him and Brennen. And he knew that he lived in the best time to be queer there was but…

The idea that he might be killed for his sexual orientation… was a sobering one.

“We can… we can go this way,” Hansel said, and Colby heard footsteps walking.

Colby didn’t move to follow Hansel immediately. Instead, he took a deep breath, collecting himself after that conversation. Fuck… he released the breath between his lips. Brennen seemed to take note of his pause, leaning in and kissing him softly.

“You good?” Brennen asked.

Colby shrugged, “Yeah, I’m okay,” He said, mostly honestly. “Fucked up story.” 

“No kidding,” Brennen said, but Colby knew he knew what part he was really referring to. “You good to keep going?”

Colby didn’t have to think too hard about that. If they were doing this they were doing this. He couldn’t let the origin story of this place fuck with his head too much. He’d been in plenty of places where people had died. The fact that at least two of them had been like him… shouldn’t have any bearing on it. “Yeah,” He said, “Not gonna let the story fuck me up too much.”

“Okay,” Brennen said softly. He kissed Colby one more time, then pulled back. “Alright. Ready?”

“Yeah,” Colby nodded, taking and releasing a deep breath. “Let’s go.” And he followed Brennen forward.

Hansel seemed to have waited for them up ahead, as Colby heard the man speak after he and Brennen approached. “I am sorry, for that element of the story,” Hansel said again.

“It’s good,” Colby said quickly, not wanting to dwell on the subject. “So then uh... how did you end up with the house?” Colby asked. “You… I mean, German is your first language, right?”

“Yes,” Hansel agreed, seeming happy to change the subject. “I grew up in Germany, but when my grandfather asked me to come to this country and join him in taking care of this house, I could not say no.” Colby heard his footsteps walk away, and Brennen started following.

“Why move to America?” Brennen asked, and they were walking again, Brennen leading Colby along with him. “Oh, is this the kitchen?”

So they were in the kitchen. Got it.

“Yes,” Hansel said, “I did not have much that I was leaving behind in Germany, and moving to a new country seemed new and exciting.” He let out a happy little sound, “Forty years later, here I am.”

“Cool,” Brennen said, and they pulled to a stop. Colby cast his gaze around the room, seeing as much as he could. He caught overheard lights, a bright square that was probably a window, the occasional glare of the overhead light reflecting off of something in the room, but… that was about it.

HIs vision had its limits.

“Brennen?” Colby asked, trying to prompt his boyfriend for a verbal description.

“Right, sorry,” Brennen apologized quickly, “Uh… old kitchen. Some new stainless steel stuff that looks really out of place with the old wood of the rest of it. Tile on the ground, black and white.”

“Thanks,” Colby noted the descriptions, trying to picture the area.

“If either of you get hungry, you are welcome to anything in the kitchen,” Hansel said.

Colby smiled, turning to face Hansel, “Thanks, man, I appreciate it.”

“Of course,” Hansel said, and he sounded vaguely pleased.

There was a faint pause for a moment. Colby liked to imagine people were looking around or something non-verbal was happening. It was generally what he imagined went on during these pauses. He knew he was listening for conversation cues, although he might have also been listening a little bit more intensely than usual this time.

Something about ghosts.

Brennen broke the silence, and it only took one question to get the conversation moving again. “So, uh…” is there like, a creepy murder basement?” Brennen asked, “Like, where did all of this shit happen?”

He heard the faint laugh from Hansel. “There is a basement, yes…” The man seemed to hesitate, before saying, “The basement was where much of the… activity, has been reported.”

“I mean, you murder a bunch of people in a place, that’s how you get haunted,” Brennen said. He pressed into Colby, “You wanna go see it?”

Colby took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

Colby wasn’t exactly sure where they were in relation to the rest of the house, but he definitely heard and felt it when Hansel opened the next door. The whole house seemed to rumble, and Colby felt the way the air currents shifted around him, and he knew without sight that the door to the basement had just opened. He shivered a little bit, the reaction moving through his body without his active input.

Brennen seemed to sense his unease, or else he felt the shudder. “Cold?” He asked, voice affectionate but wary.

Colby didn’t directly answer him, asking instead, “Basement door just opened, right?”

“Yeah,” Brennen confirmed. “It’s uh… really creepy looking.”

“This part of the house has not been renovated like the others,” Hansel explained, and Colby heard his footsteps change, from clicking on wooden floors to a much colder sound as he stepped on what was probably stone or concrete. “We have tried many times to renovate it but…” Brennen pulled Colby with him, moving slowly. “Many companies will not take this project, once they hear the story. Those that do…” And his voice was echoing now, bouncing, as Colby imagined he headed deeper into the basement. “They do not last long…”

“Well that’s freaking creepy,” Brennen muttered, and Colby heard him readjust the camera to tuck closer to Colby. “Wow, steep stairs here, babe, careful.”

“Thanks.” Colby had already felt the severe drop with the tip of his cane, carefully feeling his way down the steps. “Jeez, you weren’t joking…”

“Wonder how many people died just getting down the damn stairs,” Brennen commented, and his hand had come up to grip in Colby’s shoulder to stabilize him. “Why is it so freaking dark down here?”

Colby had noticed the lack of light, of course, but he hadn’t realized that it was dark enough for Brennen to comment on it. “Welcome to my life,” He joked back at Brennen.

He heard a short laugh from Brennen, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” He said, “I don’t know how you do it, man.”

And that was a slightly more serious note that he hadn’t expected Brennen to hit. Shit… He squeezed Brennen’s arm where he gripped it. “Practice,” He chirped, in a tone that was very trying to bely the heaviness he felt in the air. Brennen gave him a hummed response, clearly still in his head, so Colby tried to change the subject. “What does this place look like, anyway?”

“It’s uh… well right now, it’s mostly just dark... ” The direction of Brennen’s voice changed, and Colby imagined he was looking around. 

The pattern of Hansel’s steps had evened out, and Colby imagined it was because he’d hit the bottom of the stairs. Thank fuck, these stairs were stressful. “The lights can only be turned on from the bottom, I apologize,” He heard Hansel’s voice. He heard Hansel take a few more steps, and then suddenly light flooded his vision.

“Fuck…” The sudden change in the light levels made him stop and squeeze his eyes shut for a few seconds.

“Are you okay?” He heard Hansel’s concerned voice. The man must have seen him pause.

Colby nodded, forcing his eyes back open. “S’good, light changes just can be a lot for me,” Colby explained, feeling Brennen’s hand tighten on him in support. “‘Cause of how my vision works.”

“My apologies…” 

“You’re good,” Colby shook his head again, starting down the stairs again. “So, what does this place look like?”

Brennen took the cue to start talking. “It’s all concrete. Or stone, or something. The stairs are like, closed in, but I think it opens up down…” His voice trailed off, and finally, Colby felt the ground in front of him finally level out.

They must finally be in the room.

He tapped his cane a few times, trying to get a feel for the scope of the room by the way the sound bounced. It was more open sounding than he’d thought it would be, picturing a cramped basement but this… the ceiling sounded open, the room open, without too many things to muffle the sounds.

He didn’t like this.

“Brennen?” He prodded, trying to get Brennen to continue the descriptions he’d been halfway through.

“Sorry,” Brennen apologized quickly, “I just… shit man, I think there are still bloodstains on the floor.” Colby felt his heart drop, but Brennen wasn’t done, “And there’s uh… there’s a furnace in here. One that uh… is definitely large enough.”

He didn’t have to say anything else.

Colby shuddered. “What the fuck…” He muttered.

Sound bounced eerily in here. The room felt almost stiflingly quiet now that the three of them had stopped moving. Colby craned his ears, trying to listen for anything that might be… off. Might be more of the stuff they were listening for.

Brennen and Hansel were moving faintly, in the idle sort of way that humans did. Brennen’s clothing rustled as he fiddled with the camera, the metallic sound of keys coming from Hansel as he shifted, but Colby tried to tune those out. Those were normal sounds. He was listening for the sounds without a source. Nothing was immediately evident. It felt like the sound of his breath was bouncing back a little bit oddly, but for the strange tightness in his chest he might just be breathing harder than normal.

“Why can’t they get the bloodstains out?” Brennen asked, maybe not realizing why Colby was so quiet. “You’d think that there would be enough bleach somewhere…”

“I do not know…” Hansel offered, “I know that there was once carpets down here, to hide the stains so… perhaps it was simply a mark of how long they had been there, uncleaned.”

“If you were murdering a bunch of people you’d think you’d wanna cover your tracks a little better,” Brennen muttered, but Colby wasn’t really paying attention to his boyfriend because his ears had just locked onto something else.

A faint scraping sound, almost as if someone was scratching against something. And a sensation that he hadn’t felt since the last haunted house stole through him, that strange gut instinct he’d developed since going blind.

“Brennen…” He said quietly, “What’s over there?” And he pointed to where he could faintly hear the scraping sounds.

He heard Brennen and Hansel stop moving. The scraping seemed to stop too, and Colby grit his teeth. Because it had stopped but… that probably meant that sound wasn’t a mechanical background noise.

Because it had reacted to him pointing it out.

He was still connecting the dots when he realized that Brennen was answering his question. “Furnace is over there, dude,” Brennen said quietly, but there was a nervous tone to his voice. “You hearing something?”

Colby nodded. “Thought I heard a scraping noise,” He said. “And I know we’re here alone, but…”

And Brennen knew what that meant, “You feel like there’s someone over there?”

Colby just nodded. Because he had a really hard time explaining to other people how his senses worked when it came to this stuff, because it wasn’t like he could really hear a person across the room from them but… something in his gut told him that there was something more than dead air over there.

“I do not understand?” Hansel piped up, “There is no one else here but us.”

Colby grimaced, accepting that the audio cue was gone, turning instead in Hansel’s direction. “It’s kinda weird,” He prefaced, “But uh… because I can’t really see, my uh… my other senses are pretty sensitive? So uh…” He felt heat in his cheeks, because he knew how crazy it sounded to anyone who wasn’t him, or hadn’t seen the evidence for themselves. “I’m pretty good at like… keeping track of people in a room.” He swallowed. “That just bleeds over into dead people sometimes.”

“Fascinating,” He heard Hansel murmur. 

“It’s pretty cool,” Brennen agreed, and Colby grinned when he felt the light peck Brennen placed on his cheek. He grinned back up at Brennen. Brennen tried to keep the PDA to a minimum in videos, but Colby would never tire of it.

He heard the Hansel shift, and that was when he swore he heard two footsteps from where he had heard the scraping noise. And maybe it was just Hansel’s footsteps bouncing wrong in the stone room, but he definitely heard something.

And then out of nowhere, Colby felt like he was going to throw up.

He dropped his grip on Brennen’s arm to drop to his hands and knees, cane skittering when it hit the floor as his stomach violently churned. “Colby!” He heard Brennen’s concerned voice, felt hands on his back but he couldn’t respond. Right then, it was all he could do to not lose the Taco Bell he’d had for lunch on the way here.

His stomach churned again and he choked on dry retch. What the fuck? Did he have fucking food poisoning or something? But it had never come on this violently, what the fuck…

The sense of the presence in the room with them grew stronger, to the point that Colby almost felt like there was someone standing behind him, staring down at him as his stomach seemed determined to hurl itself from his body. He felt bad, he felt wrong, he felt like they shouldn’t be here…

“Colby?” Brennen’s voice sounded much more worried now, “Babe?”

“I…” He lost the sentence on a retch, this one dry as well, the burning feeling over his shoulder growing to an almost tangible degree… “God…”

But then, just like that, the feeling faded, until all that was left was the cramping in his gut. After a few more spastic clenches of his abdomen, the nausea retreated, and he was able to lean back into Brennen’s shoulder where his boyfriend had dropped to the ground next to him. “Babe, baby?” Brennen asked him faintly, arms coming to wrap around him, “You good?”

“I’m okay…” And shit, he hadn’t expected the rasp his voice would come out in. “I’m good, just…” He swallowed, hard. He hadn’t actually puked, but there was still a lingering bitter taste in his mouth. “Holy shit, that sucked…”

“What was that?” Brennen asked, one of his hands still stroking Colby’s back.

Colby shook his head. “Not sure,” He answered. “Felt really fuckin’ nauseous there for a moment but uh… I think I’m good now.” He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes, “God, that sucked…” He couldn’t shake the lingering sensations from someone’s eyes burning into the back of his head.

Maybe he’d tell Brennen about that later.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Hansel’s worried voice came from somewhere off to his left.

He nodded, “Probably just ate something bad on the way over,” He started shifting against Brennen, sitting up. A thought occurred to him, and he chuckled, “I mean, shit, maybe I pissed a ghost off or something.” Because he thought he’d read about that somewhere.

Brennen’s body tightened, and Colby felt the body language shift. “I… hmm…” He heard the couple of muttered sounds from Brennen, almost able to hear as Brennen’s brain kicked into high gear.

Still a little out of it from his impromptu retching fit, he didn’t make the same connection as Brennen at first. “Hansel…” Brennen said, and Colby felt it as Brennen pressed his cane back into his hands, having rolled off when he dropped it. “When you said your grandfather “took care” of those Nazis in your story…” He paused, “What did you mean?”

Colby tensed, realizing too that Hansel had not expanded upon that part of the story. Shit… what had he meant? A dark feeling settled in his gut.

Hansel was quiet for a long moment. Colby wasn’t sure if there was something non-verbal passing between Brennen and Hansel, but he had finally managed to get to his feet when Hansel answered. “He… took care of them. As they had taken care of all of their sacrifices,” Hansel said quietly. 

And then Colby got what Brennen was going after. “He killed them,” Colby said.

“Yes…” Hansel said faintly. “After they realized that he would not permit them to continue, they turned on him. My grandfather had no choice but to defend himself.”

“Did he burn their bodies in the furnace?” Colby asked, and he felt and heard Brennen’s intake of breath next to him, knew Brennen had made the connection too.

Hansel’s voice was quiet when he said, “Yes.”

He heard a disbelieving little huff of a laugh from Brennen. “So… there are Nazi ghosts down here too.”

“Yes… perhaps...” Hansel said, and his voice echoed in the empty, dark, stone room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I’m back!
> 
> And with an entirely new piece!
> 
> I know, I know, I need to get back to Shattered Dreams or Heat. But this story is finished (mostly) so at least you know you’ll get a whole arc this time.
> 
> And I’ve really been wanting to write as blind!Colby for a bit.
> 
> Alright, welp, that’s all for now. Please let me know what you thought, and I’ll see you in the next one!


	2. Chapter 2

They were back up in their room before they talked about it.

“Ghost Nazis…” Brennen muttered, and Colby felt him flop down onto the bed next to him. “Fucking Ghost Nazis. I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

Colby snorted, “Fucking right? This is…” He stared out the window, where the last little bit of afternoon sun still lit it up. “This is kinda intense.”

“No kidding…” He felt Brennen roll on the bed towards him. “What the hell happened earlier? You were… like you went fucking  _ white _ , bro.” He wrapped arms around Colby’s waist. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Colby murmured, moving his hands to press against Brennen’s. “If it makes you feel any better it scared the shit out of me too.” He heard a worried noise from Brennen, so he reached back to find Brennen’s head so that he could run fingers through his hair. He found an arm first, tracing up Brennen’s body to his scalp and sinking fingers into his hair. He heard a contented noise from Brennen, and he continued scratching as he tried to explain.

“So I just felt like… really fucking nauseous. Like, like my stomach cramped up really, really bad and I felt awful so like, I just dropped you saw that…”

“Mhmm…” The noise was half acknowledgement, half pleased moan.

“I just… I dunno, man. It came on really suddenly and then it was just over…” Colby pressed his lips together. “It felt like…” And this was the part he was more nervous to talk about, because he knew Brennen believed his weird ghost instincts, knew Brennen wouldn’t call him crazy but… “It felt like someone was watching me?”

He felt Brennen’s hands pause on him. After a brief pause, Brennen asked carefully, “Like, a ghosty someone?”

Colby nodded, “Felt like they were getting closer to me and then…” He shrugged, still scratching through Brennen’s hair, “And then it backed off and the nausea got better.” He furrowed his brow. “It was… really weird.”

“No shit…” Brennen muttered, his hands rubbing idly at Colby’s hips for a moment.

“Ya know, either that or I got food poisoning,” Colby said, shrugging, ignoring the fact that he’d had food poisoning, had had alcohol poisoning… it never came on or left as suddenly.

Brennen seemed to agree. “Doesn’t sound like food poisoning, babe.”

Colby sighed, pausing in his scratching. “Yeah, I know…” He pressed his lips together. “You think it was a ghost?”

He felt Brennen shrug against him. “Not ruling it out…” Brennen said, “Not after everything that we’ve seen.” His face was already tucked into the small of Colby’s back, and with a small amount of help from his hands he was able to lift the hem of the shirt and press his lips to bare skin. “You still feel okay doing this? This whole haunting investigation?”

Colby shrugged, “Yeah, I guess.” He let out a little sigh, as Brennen had started kissing not just the one spot on his back but all along his pants line. Something stirred as Colby’s body started to react to Brennen in the way it had been conditioned.

It had been a year but he never got sick of sex with Brennen…

“I mean, all of this will make really great footage…” Colby gripped tighter into Brennen’s hair as one of Brennen’s hands started tracing around the front of his hemline, on the skin of his lower abdomen. “And I still… still feel pretty safe…  _ fuck _ , babe…” He felt his eyes narrow accusingly.

“Sensitive?” Brennen chirped back at him, mirth in his voice.

“You know I am, you asshole,” Colby said, but there was no real irritation in his voice. He let out a low groan as the hand on his front started working up his chest, “What’s got you in a mood?”

“You’re hot,” Brennen said, as if it should be obvious, really. “You’re here, you’re safe, and you’re mine.” Colby rolled his eyes, definitely losing any dignity he’d had when Brennen took the opportunity to roll a nipple between his fingers.

“Fuck…” Colby shuddered, letting his eyes close, “Yours, huh?” They’d had a conversation about this, because Colby argued that he could be partially Brennen’s, but the custody was at least fifty fifty with himself.

Sam could have visitation rights on weekends.

“Yup, mine,” Brennen agreed casually, and now Colby could feel his teeth scraping along the skin of his lower back as he switched nipples. “My fuckin’ hot ass boyfriend…”

“Mmm…” Colby hummed out a noise, gripping tighter into Brennen’s hair again to feel and hear Brennen’s gasp. Those were sounds he’d never get sick of. Brennen squeezed on his nipple and he gasped too.

“Sensitive,” He muttered.

Brennen huffed a noise, “Fair is fair,” Brennen fired back, and then he was moving. Colby yelped out a surprised noise when Brennen pushed into his shoulders so that he was pressed back into the bed. Brennen shifted above him, and Colby groaned when he felt their groins align just so.

“Fuck…”

“Shh…” Brennen murmured, pushing his shirt up, “Can’t get too loud here, babe…” Colby choked something back as Brennen slid down his body, a mouth wrapped around a nipple, hand coming up to stroke at his half hard cock through his pants. “Gotta stay quiet…”

Colby sent an accusing look Brennen’s way, “You never make that easy...” He knew they had some time before dinner, but it was quickly becoming clear to Colby how Brennen wanted to spend that time. Brennen was already fumbling at his belt, so Colby warned him, “Don’t know the state of my bowels, so, you know… butt stuff at your own risk…”

He heard a snort from Brennen, “Fair…” His pants and boxers were kicked down his legs fairly quickly but Colby still jumped when Brennen wrapped a hand around him. “I forgot lube anyway.”

Colby adjusted, pressing his lips together to stifle the groan as Brennen’s hands started stroking up and down his shaft as he removed his other hand from his nipple. “Then definitely no buttsex for you.”

“S’okay,” Brennen said, and Colby heard the grin in his voice before he jumped because there was a wet finger wiggling its way between his cheeks to press gently at his hole. “I’ll improvise.”

Colby grinned faintly, even as his mouth fell open at the dual sensation. “Be my guest.” And then Brennen started up with the stimulation in earnest and being sassy became the furthest thing from his mind.

And Colby may have had a hard time policing his mouth with the hand job and shallow anal stimuation that brought him off, but he definitely got Brennen back. The bellow Brennen let out as Colby sucked Brennen down his throat was just barely muffled by one of the pillows.

“You gotta be quiet, babe…”

“Shut the fuck up,  _ babe.., _ ”

And after Brennen nearly broke his own rule about being quiet with his orgasm, Colby crawled back up the bed, finding his way to Brennen’s chest with a light hand over his skin. Brennen’s breathing was still uneven, but he wrapped strong arms around Colby. “I am never… ever… getting over the fact that you don’t have a gag reflex,” Brennen told him, once they were both spent and curled back up together in the bed.

Colby hummed out a pleased sound, his throat and jaw pleasantly sore and stretched out, a pleasant burn from his ass. “I suck your dick, like, all the time.”

“Still fuckin’ hot,” Brennen said, squeezing Colby again. “Not getting sick of it any time soon.”

“Well, thank fuck for that…'' Colby rolled his eyes, turning his head into Brennen’s chest and biting into it playfully.

Brennen yelped, “The fuck, babe?”

“It was right there.”

“You wanna talk about right there…” And Brennen had flipped them and pinned his hands over his head so that Colby couldn’t fight him off when Brennen started laying little nips across his chest and shoulders. Nowhere a camera could see of course, but places Colby would definitely be feeling later. Colby yelped and laughed, struggling playfully against Brennen but not really wanting to be let up.

This was way more fun...

His dick made a valiant effort to rejoin the conversation after a few light bites to the nipples, but someone else in his gut was also shifting, and the giggling and struggling of the bite fight was reminding him of it.

“Okay, dude- dude, I gotta- I gotta hit the bathroom,” Colby pushed up against Brennen’s hold on him. “I think you got some stuff moving if you know what I mean.”

He almost heard the grimace in the noise Brennen made. “Yeah, you know, I thought I might be hitting something but someone…” He heard a chuckle, “Someone kept begging for me to go deeper…”

“Because you were teasing my goddamn prostate, you piece of garbage,” Colby managed to free a wrist so that he could smack at Brennen’s shoulders. “Now lemme up so I can go take a shit.”

Brennen laughed, but he did let up on his hold, letting Colby pull himself free. “Okay,” Colby grumbled, “Where’d all the clothes go?” 

“I dunno, wasn’t paying attention…”

“Then use your eyes and look. I sure as shit can’t...”

With some help from Brennen, Colby managed to get himself dressed. “No hickeys, right?” Colby checked, fingers tracing absently over what would probably be a bruise on his chest.

“No,” Brennen answered, and he heard the grin when Brennen asked, “How about on me?” Colby didn’t even dignify the question with an answer. He just hit Brennen with his newly grabbed cane. Brennen laughed, but then his tone turned more serious. “You want me to help you find the bathroom?”

Colby groaned, but nodded, “Yeah, probably a good idea.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Hey, it’s good, man,” Brennen said, and Colby felt a hand on his shoulder. “You know it’s never a problem.”

And he knew that, he did it just… the insecurities all felt closer to the surface right then. So he just nodded, trying to force a smile to his face. “Shall we?”

“Sure.” Brennen stepped up to him and he found Brennen’s arm with practiced ease. He heard Brennen open the door, and they moved together down the hallway.

It was a fairly short walk to the bathroom, and it wasn’t long before Brennen was pulling them to a stop, saying, “I’ll be out here when you’re done, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Colby said, gratefully moving into the bathroom, as his bowels really had started to make their needs clear.

Colby wasn’t exactly sure how long he was in the bathroom. He’d learned after a year of fairly regular anal sex to just let his body do its thing afterwards, so he scrolled through instagram and twitter, liking and replying to messages. He read through a conversation on curly fries that had happened in the group chat with some amusement, before finally decided that his body had sorted itself out.

It was trying to leave the bathroom that became a problem. He was still scrolling through his phone, listening to Jake’s input on nacho cheese fries when he opened the door and slid his cane out in front of him.

He didn’t realize that there was a person right there.

“Oh, shit!” Were the words he heard as he felt something impact his cane, sending it spinning out of his hands. He heard someone’s disjointed footsteps, as if they had stumbled, and Colby’s hands were immediately up.

“Crap, sorry!”

“Watch where you’re going!” The voice snapped, and those were angry steps approaching him. Colby’s heart leaped up into his throat and he took a step back, not recognizing the voice.

“I’m sorry, I’m blind, I literally didn’t see you there…” He started with the apology, but then he heard Brennen’s voice.

“Colby?”

Oh thank fuck. Fortunately, the comment of apology seemed to appease the person, as Colby heard them take a few steps back as Brennen’s steps raced up.

“So you’re the blind ghosthunter,” The voice said, an almost southern drawl to his voice now that Colby had a chance to take note of it. “Hansel mentioned you.”

“I… yeah…” And he felt kinda naked and vulnerable without his cane, not quite sure where it had skittered off to. “Brennen, my…” But Brennen was already one step ahead of him, and Colby felt a hand on his shoulder as he felt his cane pressed into his hand. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing, babe,” Brennen said easily.

Colby shifted his cane in his grip, reorienting with his contact through the cane and Brennen. He released a tight breath in his lungs. He was fine. “Sorry about that, really,” Colby turned back towards their unexpected acquaintance, “I really am usually better about not running into people.”

“Hey, no big deal,” The man said, and his voice was considerably less hostile now. “I thought at first well, kids these days with their phones… but uh… you literally didn’t see me coming.” He chuckled a little bit, almost to himself.

Colby gave a wry smile, even as some sort of insecurity twinged in his gut. “Yeah, kinda how the whole blind thing works.”

“So… who are you?” Brennen asked, “I saw you earlier in the garden. I didn’t realize other people lived here besides Hansel.” Colby noted that in his head, that this was the same man that Brennen had seen earlier.

“Oh I don’t live here,” The man said quickly, “I’ve worked here a couple of years with Hansel, just helping to maintain the place. My name’s John.”

“Colby,” Colby said, extending a hand. He felt John take it and shake it shortly.

“Brennen,” He imagined Brennen did the same.

“You uh, you ever experienced any of the haunting stuff?” Brennen asked, and he’d placed himself within easy grabbing distance for Colby, but not being actively too PDA close,a subtle sort of defense and comfort location.

It was definitely appreciated in new locations.

“Uh…” John seemed to laugh a little bit, “I’ve heard some stuff, over the years, yeah.”

“Would you be willing to talk about it on camera?” Colby asked, “That’s in the room, but we’d love to hear about it.”

“Yeah, sure,” John’s voice sounded casual, “Why not?”

And then they got set up, Brennen and John finding a good place for filming. Brennen muttered something about lighting, Colby sure he was setting up the camera. Colby was seated on a couch, listening to Brennen and John get set up. He cast a look around the room they were in.

Brennen let him know they were in a study type room on the second floor, some paintings and desks and books, but also a nice set up of chairs they could film in. Currently, sunlight streamed through four large walls on the walls, giving him a vague orientation of the room. However, he could tell that the sun was starting to go down, as the lights were dimming. It would be back to electric lights for visual orientation.

Which was fine, he was used to it, just not seeing much. He wasn’t sure why it was bothering him so much today.

“Ready to go,” Brennen said, and Colby felt Brennen set himself down to the right of him on the couch. He heard John sit in a chair just off to his left.

He was fine. He was used to this, so he tried to distract himself from his thoughts. “So, you wanna tell the camera who you are and how long you’ve worked here?” Colby started with the questions.

John answered in his easy drawl, “Hi, I’m John, and I help Hansel with the upkeep and cleaning of the Bauer Estate. Been here for about five years now.” 

“You mentioned earlier, when we were talking, that you’ve seen and heard some stuff over the years,” Brennen took the next question, and Colby heard fiddling with the camera. “What sort of stuff is that?”

“The usual haunting stuff you hear about,” John answered, and his voice sounded casual, not like many of the testimonials they’d heard over the years from those who worked in haunted places. “You know, you hear something move, or footsteps, but there’s no one there? Something moves you’re not expecting, or something isn’t where you left it. The usual kinda stuff.”

“That’s crazy,” Brennen murmured.

Colby commented on his nonchalance, however. “All of these haunting though, they don’t freak you out? Like, you’re still working here, after five years?”

John chuckled a little bit, “Yeah, I know it’s a little strange,” A beat, and then, “You know, I think I’m the longest lasting of the various caretakers that this place has had.”

“Why’s that?” Brennen asked, and Colby felt him shift in his seat.

“Well, the other guys don’t last long,” John said, “The more superstitious folk… they come on for the money, ya see, but then stuff starts happening. They hear voices or see things and they quit.” Colby could hear John rubbing his hands together. “So they don’t last too long. Just doesn’t bother me like that.”

Colby grimaced. “So, why doesn’t it bother you then?”

He heard John’s chair shift, “Well, none of them have hurt me yet,” He said, “They’ve never hurt anybody, just made some noises and moved some stuff. I’m pretty confident that that’s not gonna change.”

Colby felt Brennen’s leg knock against his, “Really?” Colby asked, even as he flashed back on the nausea he’d felt earlier. Arguably, he hadn’t been  _ harmed _ , but he’d still felt like shit. “No one’s been hurt here?”

There was a brief pause, and then John answered, “Not that I’ve known. Well…” HIs tone dropped a little bit, “Not unless you believe the story that they were the ones responsible for Hansel’s grandfather’s death.”

Colby felt his spine stiffen, because he hadn’t heard anything about this before. “What do you mean?” He asked. Because he realized Hansel had never said anything about what happened to his grandfather. Hansel was old enough that Colby had just assumed the man had died of natural causes.

“He didn’t bring that up?” John seemed surprised, “Huh, usually the first thing he tells folks.”

“Yeah, no uh… no stories over here,” Brennen said, and Colby could tell by the direction of his voice that Brennen was looking at him, so he just shook his head in agreement.

“Huh…” John said, and the chair under him shifted again. “So… it happened right after the wiring for this place had been put in, when they finally got to renovating the west wing in the 1980s.” His voice was pretty flippant, “If you ask me someone just put the wiring in wrong, but the whole place went up in flames one night. Hansel’s grandfather was staying over there that night, testing the new stuff, and he didn’t get out.”

“Shit,” Brennen muttered, but Colby started to get a sick, nervous feeling in his gut. And then Brennen said something that made it even worse. “So that’s… I thought I noticed burn marks on the outside of the house when we were coming in. And the walls in here…” Colby imagined he was looking around, “That’s why some of the wood doesn’t match.” His voice dropped, “This place burned…”

“They did their best to save as much of the original house as possible, so some of the burnt stuff is still out, but some of it had to be replaced.” John filled in, “So this area looks a little disjointed, I know.”

“That explains it…” Colby felt Brennen lay back on the couch they sat on together, “I couldn’t quite figure out what was up with this place.” His voice moved to be directed at Colby, and he said, “That explains the thing I couldn’t figure out earlier, why something was off.”

Colby nodded, fidgeting with his cane. “Yeah, that would do it.” He didn’t try to “look” at Brennen, mostly still processing his own thoughts. 

This whole wing of the house had burned, and with it Hansel’s grandfather. But it had just been faulty wiring right? The reason for the fire? “They fixed the wiring, right? That caused the fire?” Colby asked, forcing a smile to his face with a laugh.

“Oh yeah, that’s been fixed for years,” John said, “Guys, that happened forty years ago. And there have been no fires since. We’re all pretty sure it was just a really unfortunate coincidence.”

Colby felt someone grip his hand, recognizing the feel of Brennen’s palm. “Come on babe, it happened in the 80s. Wiring’s come a long way since then.”

“I’m not worried,” Colby said, tossing a grin at Brennen. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

He just ignored the tugging at his gut saying the opposite.

John left a little bit after that, simply saying that despite not thinking the spirits of the house would hurt him, he still didn’t like to stay in the house too late.

“Don’t blame him,” Brennen said, as he and Colby were walking down to the kitchen. “This place looks really creepy at night. Like, the burn marks and the way the lights hit them…”

Colby sighed, just accepting that he was going to miss out on that little bit of atmosphere. He wasn’t sure if he was happy about it or just neutral.

“How did you not figure out that the walls have burn marks on them?” That was the bit Colby couldn’t figure out. From what he remembered of things that looked burnt, it was a pretty obvious look.

He felt Brennen shrug under his hand. “It’s not super obvious,” Brennen said. “I don’t know if it’s the renovation or the paint color or the shit on the walls but… like I wouldn’t have looked at the wall and thought fire, you know?”

Something like frustration pulsed through him. “I don’t actually,” Colby said, shrugging himself, tightly, “Blind, remember?”

Brennen knocked gently into him with reproach, “You know what I meant.” He paused, and Colby sensed eyes on him. When Brennen spoke again, his voice was softer, “Is it getting to you? On this trip?”

“Is what getting to me?” Colby asked, knowing what Brennen meant but intentionally dodging the question.

He heard the brief noise from Brennen, before Brennen pulled them both to a stop. He felt Brennen shift out of his grip so that he could turn 180 degrees to place hands on Colby’s shoulders. “Please don’t pull this with me,” Brennen said quietly, and Colby could sense that all of his boyfriend’s attention was on him. “You can do it with other people but you know I know you better than that.”

Colby groaned, looking downwards even though he knew it made no difference - _ hadn’t made a difference in a year and a half…- _ “Fuck, okay, maybe?”

“What’s going on?” Brennen asked quietly, and Colby felt the kiss he pressed to the top of Colby’s head.

Colby sighed, chewing on his lips as he gathered his words. “I… I don’t know what it is, really,” He said honestly. “Just… shit seems closer to the surface today. I don’t want to say that I can usually ignore the whole blind thing because obviously I can’t but…” He shrugged emptily. “Feels weirdly like… there, today.”

Brennen’s fingers moved in comforting massaging motions on his shoulders. “Today’s been a lot,” Brennen said quietly. “Anything I can do?”

Colby thought for a moment, bringing his hand up so that he could guide Brennen’s forehead to rest against his own. “I… not really,” He said quietly. “You’re doing everything right. I just…” He shrugged again. “Some days are just still bad. Keeps feeling like…” He bit his lip again, “Today is just… full of all of these things that I’m missing, or can’t do because I’m blind.” He fisted a hand in Brennen’s hair, “Just a bad brain day.”

Because he was usually fine. But every now and again there was a day when all he wanted to be able to do was the one thing he knew that he would never be able to do again.

See.

Colby felt Brennen nod just a little bit. “I’m sorry, babe,” Brennen said quietly. “I know you know this but… you know it makes no difference to me. I’m here for you.”

“I know…” Fuck, Colby knew that. He knew that so well but… fuck. “I’m sorry,” He muttered, “Just… bad brain day.”

“I know…” Brennen massaged his shoulders a little bit longer, before he murmured, “You know, we don’t have to stay here. If you wanna like… skip on this for a bit… or shit, even leave… we totally can. If that would help you.”

And Colby considered it for a minute. They could be back in LA before too late if they left now, back in the trap house, in a space he knew like the back of his hand, with people who knew how to accommodate and work with his disability, be in a space where he could almost forget that this wasn’t a normal thing for everyone else…

Be comfortable.

But no. That wasn’t what he came here to do, not something that he wanted to get trapped in, not someone he wanted to be. He’d resolved pretty early in his whole blind acceptance journey that he didn’t want this to change anything.

“No,” Colby said, “We’re staying. I just…” He frowned, “Did we pass any sort of like, fast food on the way in? I wouldn’t mind getting out of here for dinner.”

Brennen squeezed his shoulders. “I saw an In-and-Out on the way in,” He said, accepting Colby’s choice without comment. “That work?”

Colby nodded, grateful to Brennen for everything he did, and everything he was. “Yeah, that would be really good, I think,” He said, leaning forward and kissing Brennen gently. He felt the soft chuckle against his lips, and Brennen kissed him back soothingly.

Fuck… how did Brennen always know exactly what to do and say? “I love you, so much,” Colby murmured.

“Love you too,” Brennen murmured back.

And suddenly the feeling of nausea was back with a vengeance. Colby gasped, not losing his feet this time but definitely swaying violently.

“Colby?” Brennen’s voice grew panicked. “Babe, what’s going on. Baby?”

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna…” Colby wanted to puke, dropping his cane again and gripping into Brennen’s shirt as Brennen gripped his shoulders tighter. “Babe…”

“Hey, hey, Colby, what’s going on? Baby? You wanna… okay, we’re sitting down, we’re sitting down…”

“Bren…” Colby’s mouth tasted sour. That burning in the back of his neck was back, Colby could feel it past the tight grip Brennen had on his shoulders. There were eyes on him, and they weren’t just Brennen’s. There were heavy, angry eyes on him.

_ “Wrong…” _

He wasn’t sure if he heard it or he felt it. There was too much roaring in his ears, the wind that wasn’t in the room making the world a foggy maelstrom. “Brennen, please…” He gasped.

“Baby, how can I help you, baby…” Brennen’s hands were on his face. “Baby, breathe, breathe, baby, please…”

“I… I…” He shuddered all over, feeling the sweat break out on his body. He burned all over, feeling eyes on him, not just one pair, but multiple, staring him down,  _ hating him _ … “Brennen…”

“Baby…”

He couldn’t be here anymore. He needed out of this house, he needed to be outside… “Outside,” He gasped. “I can’t… outside, please.”

“Okay, okay, baby, I got you, I got you.” He felt Brennen shift to his side, wrapping an arm under his shoulder, “Can you stand?”

“I… yeah, I can…” Colby wasn’t entirely sure how he got his feet under him, and he was sure that it was in no small part due to Brennen’s support. The world was spinning but Brennen was solid, and with every bit of distance that they made towards the door and away from the kitchen, the feeling faded.

He was next fully aware of his surroundings when he could feel cold stone under him and a cool evening breeze on his face. His hands were wrapped up in someone else’s, and he could smell Brennen’s scent next to him. “Hey…” He breathed.

“Hey…” Brennen’s voice was soft, still full of so much concern. “How you feeling?”

“Better…” Colby muttered. “Much better, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Brennen said softly, squeezing his hands. “Same thing from earlier?”

“Yeah…” Colby swallowed, still able to taste the sour in the back of his throat. He hadn’t vomited, again. But he was still left feeling like he had. “Fuck…”

“Shit…” Brennen squeezed his hands, leaning into his shoulder. “Babe, you gotta stop doing that. Scares the shit out of me.”

Colby laughed, the sound coming out a little choked. “S’not like I fuckin’ wanna do this…”

Brennen groaned, nuzzling into his neck. “God…” There was silence between them for a moment. Colby took a couple of breaths, recentering himself.

“Guess it’s not food poisoning,” He said, grimacing and leaning into Brennen a little bit more.

“Ghosts?” Brennen asked, but he didn’t sound like he was casting doubt on Colby, “That the theory we’re going with?”

“Best one I’ve got,” Colby said, shrugging. Brennen let out a soft noise of complaint as the shrugging jostled him. Colby chuckled a little bit, kissing the top of Brennen’s head. “Damn, I was hoping all of that would just be in the basement.”

Brennen was quiet, his body stiffening. Colby furrowed his brows, curious now. “What?”

“The uh… I didn’t think about it at the time but…” Brennen’s voice was hesitant, “We were right next to the basement, when you went white. Like, a bit down but… still really close.”

“Well shit,” Colby stated. There was another quiet moment between them as they both silently absorbed what that meant.

“Dammit,” Brennen said quietly, “Looks like we’re gonna have to go back down there, huh?”

“Yeah,” Colby said, nodding. “I think so.” He pushed against Brennen, and Brennen lifted his head from his shoulder. “But uh first… we should go get food, okay?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Brennen kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Burgers first, then ghosts.”

Colby snorted, but nodded.

“Let’s do it.”

The food really did make him feel better, warm and familiar in his mouth and his gut, and Colby was feeling much better about the whole day and investigation. Now, it was time for the lights out part of the investigation, the part where they got out the divining rods, the EMF reader, and the camera, and tried to see if they could capture anything on film.

While Brennen fiddled with the supplies, Colby was listening. They were out in the hallway, on the second floor after what seemed to be a mutual decision to put off going into the basement for as long as possible. Colby lightly traced the wall with his fingertips while he walked. He hadn’t heard anything super exciting yet, unfortunately. There had been a couple of potentially misplaced audio cues, sounds that he couldn’t precisely pinpoint but still couldn’t write off as just being the house.

His mental health seemed a little better too, as he focused on the abilities that had been given to him with his loss of sight, rather than those that had been taken from him. “Anything?” He called to Brennen, not sure if Brennen was getting anything visually with the tools they had.

“Nothing,” Brennen said, mild irritation in his voice. “How about you?”

Colby shrugged, turning back to walk back towards Brennen. “Nothing definitively ghosty,” He said honestly, “Pretty sure everything I’ve heard has just been like… house noises, you know?”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Brennen said, and Colby tracked his voice as he slowly made his way back to Brennen. Brennen reached for his shoulder when he got close enough, letting Colby know where he was.

“If there’s anyone here, who’d like to talk to us…” Brennen repeated his sentence from earlier, fingers tracing lightly on Colby’s shoulder, “Please make yourselves known.”

But once again, there was silence.

“Shit…” Colby muttered, “Thought we’d be hearing more by now.”

“Same…” Brennen agreed. He made a noise of irritation. “There’s… nothing, on the EMF reader, the rods aren’t reacting.” He sighed. “Come on, man, there are goddamn ghost Nazis here, why isn’t this working?”

Colby sighed, leaning into Brennen’s touch. “We know why,” He said quietly. “It’s in the basement. Most of the shit we’ve seen so far… that came out of the basement.”

Brennen made a noise, but it was one of reluctant agreement. “I know,” He said. “You good to check it out? It hasn’t exactly been great to you so far.”

“I know,” Colby said, a little nervous because  _ fuck _ , those nausea spells sucked but… “If we wanna get to the bottom of this… that’s where we need to go,” He said.

Brennen sighed, and he felt arms wrap around him gently. “I just worry about you.”

Colby grit his teeth. “I’m fine,” He said quietly, feeling the roughness of Brennen’s cheek rub against his. “We gotta… this is why we’re here. We gotta do this.”

“Okay…” Brennen said, reluctant acceptance in his voice. “You just… you just let me know if you need to leave, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Colby kissed Brennen’s cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

Brennen didn’t argue with him further, and in short time, the both of them were headed back down the stupid death stairs, all of the equipment back in the backpack as Brennen navigated the camera and guiding Colby down the stairs.

“I hate these fucking stairs,” Brennen muttered, “Why couldn’t they make the stairs less stupid when they built this place?”

Colby chuckled a little bit, even as it felt like the sound got sucked right back into the void of the basement. “That would be too easy.”

“Right?”

They made it to the stone floor with no further words, and Brennen gave Colby a murmured warning before he turned on the basement lights. Colby squinted in the sudden lighting change. “I’m gonna set up the camera, okay?” Brennen warned him, before detaching.

“Yeah, sure.” Colby heard Brennen heft the backpack off of his back and start fidgeting with the contents inside.

Colby shifted modes, letting the sounds he could identify fade into the background as he started searching through the other sounds in the room, the sounds he couldn’t immediately find a source for.

Mindful of not hitting Brennen unintentionally with his cane, he steered his way to the wall of the room, letting the tips of his fingers and his cane guide him. The stone was cold and smooth under his fingertips. He could feel the individual stones and the grout that joined them. The texture he could feel through the tip of his cane confirmed that the walls and the floors shared the same texture. “What color are the walls?” Colby asked, trying to piece together his surroundings.

“Gray,” Brennen answered, “Like, not dark or light gray just… gray, you know?” Colby rolled his eyes a little bit at Brennen’s descriptions. Brennen was not great at them. “I think… I think there are some burn marks on them.”

Colby felt his eyes widen. “Burn marks? Like the fire got down here?”

He could hear the shrug in the noncommittal noise Brennen let out. “Maybe?” He heard a pause in the fidgeting that Brennen was doing. “Maybe they’re from torches? Or uh…” Brennen paused, and his tone was darker when he asked, “Like sacrifice shit?”

Shuffling. Only a second of sound but Colby froze, because that sound didn’t have an origin. “Did you…?”

“Yeah,” Brennen confirmed. “Where was that?”

Colby cast his gaze towards a darker corner of the room, pointing vaguely where he thought he’d heard it from. “What’s over there?”

Brennen’s voice was quiet when he answered, “That’s the furnace, bro.”

“Fuck…” Colby muttered. “How close am I? To the furnace?”

“Maybe twenty feet?”

Colby debated free walking to the furnace, but decided that hugging the wall was probably a slightly safer choice. “Camera’s on?”

“I don’t know if it caught that noise but yeah, it’s up on the tripod now.”

“Good.”

And he knew he was approaching a furnace, but the warmth from the furnace didn’t explain the tingling warmth that started to burn across his neck and chest. “Getting that feeling again,” Colby warned Brennen, wary of almost passing out again. “Not the nausea but the tingling watching feeling.”

He wasn’t exactly sure how much sense that made, but Brennen seemed to accept it. “Like someone’s looking at you?” Brennen confirmed, and Colby heard him shift, heard footfalls move towards Colby.

“Yeah,” Colby swallowed, “Exactly like that.”

“Shit…” Brennen murmured, “So… someone’s with us?”

Colby didn’t have to answer. The massive scraping sound they heard from the furnace answered that question. “Brennen…?”

“I hear it,” Brennen confirmed. Colby looked away from the light he imagined was hanging from the ceiling to try to see the furnace, see if there was any light emanating from it.

He didn’t see anything, but he didn’t if that was just his vision or if there was actually no light. But there was another unmistakable scraping sound from inside the furnace, and Colby couldn’t help the step he took back.

The burning sensation of eyes on him crept around his neck.

“Dude, EMF reader’s freaking the fuck out,” Brennen informed him, and he could hear the emotion in Brennen’s voice. Terrified but so excited. Colby smiled a little bit. This was why he brought Brennen with him on these trips. His friend always seemed so genuinely excited to be doing this.

Even if he was also freaking the fuck out.

“I’ve got the drowsing sticks,” Brennen offered, and his voice was more controlled than Colby would have anticipated. “You wanna try to ask some questions or something?”

“I… yeah, sure.” He didn’t feel unsafe yet, even as eyes burned into the back of his neck. He could… he could always leave, the instant he didn’t feel safe.

“Okay, okay…” He heard Brennen digging through the backpack. He took a breath and carefully made his way back to his boyfriend’s voice. He tapped lightly against something in the middle of the room, noting Brennen’s quiet “Here,” as the cane made impact.

“I gotcha,” He answered, carefully making his way to the ground, sitting cross legged next to Brennen and carefully setting his cane off to the side. He heard the jingling of the sticks, imagined Brennen was holding them out in front of him. He’d get that focused look in his eyes.

He thought he was imagining it correctly. Because the version in his head was pretty cute.

There were noises around him. He could chalk some of them up to house noises but… there were too many to only be background noise. “There are people here…” Colby murmured, his head cocked to the side.

“Of course there are…” Brennen sounded a little on edge, “Okay, uh…” Brennen seemed like he didn’t quite know where to go, so Colby started.

“So… hi! I’m Colby, this is Brennen,” He introduced himself to the room. Always felt better to talk to the ghosts like they were people too. Because they were really, if he thought about it. “We uh… we just wanted to talk to you guys, if we could.”

His shoulder twinged. He winced, rubbing at it absently.

“Is there anyone here who wants to talk to us?” Brennen asked the next line. “If you could cross the sticks if you wanna- oh shit, they’re crossing like right now.”

Colby nodded, that didn’t surprise him. He heard something shift, something shuffle. It sounded like it was right behind Brennen. “I can still hear them,” Colby said quietly, and it always kinda freaked him out, that he could do this and that Brennen wouldn’t call him crazy but… here he was.

Fucking certified medium.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this…” Brennen whispered, “Like… that this is real.”

Colby felt a grin tug at his lips. “Yeah, me too sometimes.”

Because they’d been to enough hauntings that there was no doubt to either of them that this… this was real.

The noises shifted again, and Colby thought he heard them move towards him. His chest burned, and there were eyes on him. “Are you… are you one of the people who was killed here?” Colby asked, focusing all his attention on his ears. He was trying to ignore the tingling of his skin.

“Crossing again,” Brennen informed him quietly.

“Okay, okay…” Colby paused before the next question, because he was vaguely concerned with which one of the ghosts they were talking with.

A victim? Or one of the murderers…

This spirit.. whichever one they were, didn’t feel evil though. Colby could definitely tell they were being watched but… they didn’t feel evil.

Didn’t feel like that awful, wrong feeling he’d gotten earlier.

And he didn’t want to puke, so that was a cool positive.

“Do you want to hurt us? I guess crossing is yes?” Brennen asked this question, and Colby waited for the answer with baited breath. There was a pause, and then Brennen said, “No movement. So, I guess that’s a no?”

And then several things happened at once. Colby groaned out some sort of noise as his stomach cramped suddenly. It wasn’t as intense as before, but still was nowhere near pleasant. There was a scraping noise from the furnace again, but this one was considerably louder and much more violent.

And then Brennen’s low voice came, “Dude, the sticks just crossed.”

“Fuck…” Colby groaned, one of his hands dropping to his stomach, pressing in to try to alleviate the pain.

“You feeling bad again?” Concern was back in Brennen’s voice, “We can stop…”

“No,” Colby muttered, “I’m good, it’s not as bad as before…” A particularly painful cramp made him let out a pained noise that belied his words.

“Are you guys doing this to him?” Brennen asked, and he’d projected his voice to be louder, sounding angry and just a little scared. “Because you need to stop. You’re hurting him.”

“Yeah, you tell those ghosts, babe,” Colby muttered. “I’m really fine, it’s manageable…”

“The rods crossed,” Brennen cut him off mid sentence. There was a brief second of silence. And then all of the sudden Colby heard another loud scrape from the furnace and the pain in his stomach was very  _ not _ manageable. He gasped out a noise, the sudden revolt in his stomach feeling like his organs were twisting up inside of him.

“Colby…” He was on the ground on his side, when had he gotten there? He was curled slightly into his stomach, his hands supporting his upper body as his stomach felt like it was trying to hurl itself from his body.

“Colby, baby, baby, we’re done, okay, we’re done. We’re going upstairs and we’re done with this…”

“I can…”

“No, we’re done.”

“Brennen…”

“Colby, shut the fuck up, I’m calling it, we’re done.”

How the fuck was he supposed to fight against Brennen when he sounded like that?

“Okay…”

He heard Brennen shoving stuff into the bag, and he hoped the camera was on, because if he was gonna have to suffer like this they’d better get this on film. 

“My cane…”

“It’s in my pocket… come on baby, let’s go...”

Except that Brennen went to stand up with him and it wasn’t that simple. His stomach protested any attempt to get vertical, and he gripped into Brennen’s shirt just to try to ground himself. “Bren…”

“I got you, I got you,” Brennen’s voice was soothing before he swore, “God fucking fuck these stairs!”

“S’okay…” At least, he thought it was okay until he tried to go up the stairs and that was not a fun experience while blind and trying to lose his stomach. “Fuck…”

“You got this baby, you got this…”

He wasn’t sure how he got upstairs, but somehow he managed it. His hearing fuzzed in and out, so he was sure that Brennen was talking to him, but he lost most of the words. The trip was a blur of nausea, stomach pain, and not being able to keep track of where he was because everything that he used to stay oriented was fucked because of whatever that spirit was doing to him.

Because he was sure now that that was what was happening.

Why him? Why was it always him?

The nausea and pain faded the further they got from the basement, and by the time Brennen had pulled them both down into bed he felt like his organs had finally settled back where they were supposed to be. Brennen’s chest was warm and solid against his back, and Colby snuggled back into him as Brennen stroked through his hair.

Colby was the first to talk. “God, that sucks.”

“Yeah, we’re done with this,” Brennen said quietly. “This whole thing, we’re done.”

Colby tried to rally, something pinging in his stomach, “No, no, I can… just gimme a moment, we can keep going…”

“Absolutely not,” Brennen said tightly. “No fucking way.”

Colby felt an inappropriate burst of anger. “Why the fuck not?” And he’d admit that his tone probably came out a little hostile.

Brennen’s body shifted against him, tightening, “Because you just almost passed out, because you…”

“I’m fine, we can keep…”

“No, we’re done,” Brennen squeezed him tighter. 

“I can do this,” Colby retorted, turning a bit in Brennen’s grip.

“No, we’re done.”

“Are you trying to tell me what I can and can’t do?” Colby could taste the bitterness on the back of his tongue.

Brennen paused, and Colby felt his rib cage move as he took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice had evened out. “I’m not trying to tell you anything,” Brennen said. “I just…” He shuddered, “Fuck, man, I don’t think I can watch you go through that again.” He squeezed Colby harder against his chest. “Fuck, babe, scares the shit out of me…”

“But I need…” He cut himself off as he registered Brennen’s words, thought about what was actually going on in his head. And then he realized he was just being a jackass. “I… fuck, sorry…” Colby groaned, turning his face into the pillow. “I… sorry…”

“S’okay…” Other than accepting the apology, Brennen didn’t speak, his hand just continuing its light, comforting movement across his ribs. And that was something that Colby had always appreciated about Brennen. Brennen always gave him time to figure out what he wanted to say before just asking.

Because he wasn’t entirely sure what was going through his head but… well… maybe he had an idea.

“I think… I don’t know what I think…” Colby said, “I can’t…” He pressed his lips together.

Brennen paused in his stroking, his hand coming to press flat against Colby’s chest. “You don’t need to prove anything to me,” He murmured quietly.

And shit, sometimes Brennen just hit shit on the head. Colby groaned. “Fuck, I know… I just…” He pressed a hand over Brennen’s, twining their legs together. He sighed. “Sorry…”

“S’okay…” Brennen said, kissing him on the back of the neck again. “I still love you.”

“Love you too,” Colby muttered back, still feeling a burst of warmth in his stomach at Brennen’s words. “I’m a fucking mess…”

“No, you’re not,” Brennen murmured.

“Yes, I am,” Colby said, turning so that Brennen could see his face. “I just almost passed out and puked.” He put a grin on his face so that Brennen would know that he was joking.

He heard Brennen’s snort. “Okay, maybe a little bit of a mess,” Brennen conceded. He paused, then asked, “So… same shit as before? Something staring at you, feeling like you’re gonna puke?”

“Yeah,” Colby shuddered, still able to feel the burning eyes that had been on him as a phantom sensation. “Why does that keep happening?”

“Guess they don’t like you,” Brennen murmured, kissing the back of Colby’s neck. “Which I entirely don’t understand.”

“Yeah, yeah, pick on the blind guy,” Colby groaned, wrapping his hands up in Brennen’s. “Fucking rude.”

The energy in the room shifted. “I… fuck…” Brennen muttered, “Could they…” And Brennen shook behind him, an angry noise coming from his throat.

“What?” Colby asked, suddenly worried again.

“They’re Nazis,” Brennen said, and his voice was tight and angry. “They’re Nazis. And…” He buried his face into Colby’s neck, and he heard a growl against his skin.

But now Colby was worried. “Brennen, what?” He asked again, squeezing Brennen’s hands.

“Disabled people,” Brennen said, and Colby didn’t know where Brennen was going with that until he said, “Nazis killed a whole lot of disabled people. With the Jews and the gays…”

And then it made sense.

“That… that’s really fucked up,” Colby said, and he knew that, knew that was fucked up… still tugged at a certain sensitive part of him that worried if his disability didn’t make him less desirable.

That it would have marked him for death to those types of people.

And it sure as shit didn’t help that he was still coming off of all of his insecurities about his blindness during these investigations.

Brennen knew him well, and he knew Brennen sensed that there was more going on, even if he didn’t say it. Brennen just placed a gentle kiss to the back of Colby’s neck, murmuring, “I love you. So fucking much. And I’m so fucking lucky to call you mine.”

Colby smiled, because he knew that, most of the time. But it was still good to hear it.

“Love you too,” He answered back. He took a deep breath of Brennen’s scent and tried to will the tension from his body.

“I love you so much,” Brennen murmured, kissing the back of his neck. “So fucking much…”

Colby just hummed a soft noise, and let Brennen hold him. Because he knew that at least, for one person, his blindness would never be a problem.

They could take care of the outro and dealing with the video later. Right now… right now he just needed to be held by his boyfriend…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Years Eve to everyone! So this story is literally flying out at warp speed, so here’s this chapter today and I’ll try to get the next one out in about two days time after it’s edited.
> 
> Next chapter will include the scene that inspired this whole piece. I’m super excited for it.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, let me know what you thought, and I’ll see you guys in the next one!


	3. Chapter 3

In the end, the night didn’t go much later. He and Brennen picked themselves up to film a quick outro, explaining what had happened and why they’d fled the basement, and promising to check in if anything else happened.

After they’d resolved that, Brennen pulled Colby back into the bed, wrapping secure arms around him. “How you feeling?”

“Tired,” Colby admitted, tucking his face into Brennen’s chest. “But good.”

“Good,” Brennen murmured, “Good night, baby.”

“Goodnight.”

Colby had always been a heavy sleeper. It was practically a meme among his fan base. Had been a heavy sleeper that was, until he lost his sight. He still wasn’t a light sleeper by any means, but he felt that he was a lot more sensitive these days to any sort of unexpected stimulus when he was sleeping.

As such, he was the first to wake up at the smell of smoke.

At first, the scent didn’t register. Well, the presence of a scent registered, but not what it was or what the implications were.

And then he registered that if he was smelling smoke then something must be on  _ fire _ …

“Brennen…” Colby muttered, rolling over to paw at his boyfriend. “Hey, wake up. You smell that?”

Brennen was swift to be aware once woken, and it wasn’t more than a couple of seconds before Brennen was shifting next to him. Colby heard deliberate sniffing noises, followed by a, “What the fuck…”

Colby was immediately picturing the story John had told them earlier, about the whole west wing going up in flames, his heart rate already kicking up in his chest. “Brennen, what’s on fire?”

“I don’t… I don’t know…” Colby felt Brennen stand up from the bed, heard his footsteps walk to the door of the room. Colby heard the door handle turn, then heard Brennen’s swear of pain as the door swung open.

Even not being able to see outside the room Colby felt the heat that rolled into the room through the door. He heard Brennen’s second swear, felt the way the texture of the air changed as smoke bellowed through the door, seeping down into his lungs and choking the oxygen from the air. “Get down,” Colby gasped, remembering something at least about fires.

Smoke rises…

He felt his way to the floor on the side of the bed. The air quality wasn’t much better down here, but it was definitely less choking. Brennen was coughing, and Colby carefully felt his way towards his boyfriend. Sweat beaded on his forehead, holy shit it was hot.

“You good?” He murmured, finding something that felt like Brennen’s back. “Babe?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Brennen managed out through his coughs. “Fucking door was fucking… I think I burned my hand…”

“Shit, really? You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine…” Brennen brushed him off.

Colby’s brain was already spinning in five million different directions. They had to get out of here, they had to get out. “Dude, we gotta get out of here.”

“Fuck, fuck, I know, I know…” Brennen muttered, “Shit… okay, uh…”

“How bad is it out there?” Colby asked, feeling at least a little hopeful because he couldn’t see any flickering lights that might indicate fire but as he already knew, his vision couldn’t always be trusted.

“No like, fire fire, but like, there’s a lot of smoke,” Brennen muttered. “Fuck, fuck…”

“Okay, okay, we gotta, we gotta go,” Colby repeated, already hating this, hating that the house was on goddamn fire and he had no idea how to even begin getting out of here.

“I know!” Brennen snapped, and then quickly muttered, “Sorry, okay, just…” Colby felt Brennen grip at the hand that Colby had his back, “Okay, this way, I’m sorry.”

“S’okay… Jesus…” Brennen led him forward, and Colby only felt the heat increase as they left the small amount of shelter the room had provided. “Fuck… to the left, remember?” Despite the severity of the situation he couldn’t help but poke a little fun at Brennen.

“Really, babe?”

“Dude, I really, really don’t wanna get lost right now…”

The air outside the room was thick with smoke and Colby felt his throat catch on it, letting out a choked cough. Brennen didn’t seem much better, having to pause every now and again to cough something out of his lungs. Colby couldn’t see any fire, which he counted as a good sign, and after he pulled his shirt over his mouth he felt like he could breathe a little better.

Thank fuck he and Brennen had worn clothes to bed.

Colby couldn’t get over how oppressive and all consuming the heat was. It was like he and Brennen were crawling through a hallway of open ovens, the dry heat evaporating any bit of sweat his body tried to produce. “S’fucking hot,” He muttered.

“S’Gonna be okay,” Brennen was saying under his breath. “S’Gonna be okay, we’re gonna get outside and it’s gonna be okay,  _ fuck _ , I can’t see anything, there’s so goddamn much smoke.”

Colby wasn’t sure why he found a twisted sort of humor in Brennen’s words, commenting, “Welcome to my life.”

“You’re just full of jokes tonight, aren’t you?”

“Hey man, you put it there…”

That was when Colby heard a sickening crack. “Brennen, what was that?” Was the last thing he had time to ask before the floor gave out from under then.

“Shit!”

And where they had been crawling next to the furnaces now he’d fallen into one. The floor cracked and splintered under him and there was only a second of free fall before Colby felt something sear into his stomach as he felt, hitting something and rolling off of it. He knew he shouted something out, losing his grip on Brennen in the chaos.

There was fire. He could see it now, columns of light burning into his retinas with the smoke in the air. He came to stop against something that felt searingly hot, something metal, and he shouted again, jerking back from it. He’d probably burnt his back, his hands felt burnt too but all of that kinda failed into the background because he’d lost Brennen.

“Brennen!” Colby called, sucking in too deep of a breath and choking on smoke. “Brennen!”

But there was no response. “Brennen!” Colby cried, and panic turned his voice shrill and desperate. “Goddamnit Brennen, I am blind, where are you?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck. Where was Brennen? Was he unconscious? Unable to answer? Colby refused to consider any of the other options that popped into his head.

“Brennen…” He didn’t have enough oxygen for a proper call this time. He put a hand behind him, swearing vehemently again as his hand pressed against a scaldingly hot metal surface and jerking it back with a choked gasp.

Metal surface… metal surface that almost felt like…

Fridge. It felt like a stainless steel fridge. The kitchen. He was in the kitchen.

Okay, fuck, he knew where he was now, he knew where he was now he just had to… to get out… 

But what about Brennen? He had no idea where Brennen had fallen, and there was shit, debris everywhere and he couldn’t just  _ look _ because he was fucking blind...

Fuck, he should have held tighter to Brennen, should have fucking… done  _ something _ . Where the fuck was his boyfriend? He was not fucking leave Brennen here in this burning fucking kitchen but he couldn’t see, and it was fucking hot, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe by the minute.

“Colby-” It was the faintest of sounds that met his ears, but his ears were sensitive, and Colby immediately latched onto the sound and it’s location.

“Brennen?” He crawled forward, desperately hoping that he’d actually heard Brennen’s voice and that the lack of oxygen and stifling heat weren’t playing tricks on him. “Brennen, please…”

His hands ran into wood and broken and flaming hot debris, but it was all immediately worth it when he felt flesh under his hands. Warm, living, flesh. “Shit, shit…” And he really shouldn’t be wasting oxygen, but when he felt Brennen’s neck under his hands, he couldn’t help the breath of “Oh thank God…”

“Col…” It was the faintest sound coming from Brennen’s mouth, but it was there, Brennen was there. Brennen was alive.

“Babe, fuck…”. Colby could cry, except that his tears evaporated almost as soon as they left his eyes, “Are you okay?”

Something non-committal left Brennen’s mouth, a sound that Colby couldn’t identify. “Babe? Come on, we gotta go, we gotta…”

Brennen was moving under his fingertips but he wasn’t answering him. It was about that time that Colby figured out that something might be wrong. “Babe, what’s…”

And then Brennen went slack against him, his head lolling absently in Colby’s hands.

“No, Brennen, you can’t…” He immediately feared the worst. Colby felt for Brennen’s throat, relieved to find a pulse there. Brennen was still alive just… unconscious. And absolutely no help to Colby.

“Fuck, fuck, Brennen, I’m blind, I can’t…” Colby didn’t even think about it when he tried smacking Brennen’s face. “You gotta wake up and you gotta… fuck, babe…”

But Brennen remained unresponsive and it was suddenly very clear to Colby that he was on his own.

“Fuck… fuck shit motherfucker…” Okay. Okay, so he was on his own. On his own. In a fucking burning mansion he’d never seen. With a fucking unconscious and likely injured boyfriend.

Fuck.

“Okay, okay…” He quelled the initial instinct to panic, because that would get him nowhere, get him and Brennen nowhere. He had… he had to find the door to the kitchen.

And he had to take Brennen with him. Except that he couldn’t carry Brennen because then he’d have to stand and there was way too much smoke in the air. Fuck…

“Sorry, babe…” He murmured, and he hooked hands under Brennen’s armpits, checking to make sure that Brennen’s face wouldn’t drag before pulling on his boyfriend.

And then Brennen didn’t move. Something was preventing him from dragging Brennen with him. Colby swore quietly, because he didn’t fucking have time for this. He’d already closed his eyes, because the small bit of vision he had wasn’t helping him and the smoke burned his eyes, his lungs struggling to pull enough oxygen from the air that the fire also pulled from.

Colby readjusted, digging his heels into the ground and gripping Brennen tightly. Brennen must be stuck under something, probably debris from the roof falling in.

“Goddammit…” He gave another tug, but Brennen again didn’t budge. “Fuck.” Colby shook his head, bracing himself again. No, this shit didn’t get to keep him, this house did’t get to keep him, didn’t get to keep his boyfriend. “You don’t get to keep him, he’s mine!” Colby snarled, and he pulled hard.

There was resistance, and then Brennen’s body was moving, slowly and painfully until he pulled free. Colby thought he heard something ripping but that also could have been the crackle of the fire choking out his other sensory input. He pulled Brennen against his chest temporarily, feeling the secure solidness of his body.

Okay, next step. Getting out.

“Fuck, fuck…”. But now that he had Brennen he didn’t know where to go. “Fuck…” Which way was out? He’d figured out that he was in the kitchen but he didn’t know where in the kitchen he was and what way was out. He knew he was by the basement but he didn’t want to walk straight into the columns of fire he could see, and…

And then his ears picked up on a strange noise. 

“The fuck?” It sounded like a door opening. And this opening door sound was familiar.

It sounded like the basement door.

The noise that should have filled him with dread instead gave him hope. Because right then he didn’t give a fuck that the door lead down to the creepy ass basement. Right now, It gave him a direction, because now he knew which way was out. “Okay, babe, okay, we’re going…” He narrated to Brennen, knowing that it was entirely unnecessary.

Still made him feel better.

It took some fumbling and what Colby was sure would be burns once he had the time to focus on them, but Colby was able to pull them out of the kitchen and down the hallway. The air quality was only slightly better, and Colby knew the fire was spreading. He just hoped he would be able to get himself and Brennen outside before more of the house gave out.

“Brennen, you still out?” He asked, hoping for an answer, knowing that he probably wouldn’t get one. He wasn’t wrong, and Brennen was quiet.

Shit… he hoped whatever was going on with Brennen… wasn’t permanent.

“Can’t think about that right now, gotta… gotta keep going,” Colby muttered to himself, his lungs and ribs burning as another coughing fit overtook him.

God, his lungs were going to be fucked after this…

He’d check the wall, every couple of pulls with his fingertips, trying to keep track of where he was. Any scent or textile mental cues that he might have had to remember where in the house he was were fucked because of the fire and the smoke. “God, fuck…”

Once he found the basement how the hell was he going to get out of here? He wasn’t exactly sure where out was from the basement and it wasn’t like he could just fucking look. He’d been way too out of it the last few times Brennen had rushed them from the basement and how was he supposed to… 

And then he felt a tingling sensation on the back of his neck. “Motherfucker!” He swore, “I do not have fucking time for this…” Panic rose up in the back of his throat because holy fuck he could not afford to start getting nauseous and pass out right now, not when the house was on fire, not when Brennen might have some sort of brain damage, not when…

“I need you to help me, or I need you to leave me the fuck alone,” He snapped at whatever entity was there with him, because he couldn’t do this right now. Not right now.

There was a pause as Colby struggled with Brennen’s unconscious body, mostly just pausing to try to desperately catch his breath in oxygen thin air.

And then he heard a sharp, distinctive rapping noise. Colby cocked an ear towards it immediately, the sound maybe ten feet in front of him. “What the fuck?” He muttered.

He didn’t move for a moment, still trying to catch his breath, and then he heard the sound again. Same place, same frequency, same volume. There was almost a sense of… expectancy in the air.

It took a moment, and a third rap before Colby asked, “Are you… are you trying to help me?”

There was an almost immediate rap in response.

Colby swallowed, his heart up in his throat again. “Are you showing me how to get out?”

He didn’t have a moment to get any sort of false hope up. There was a rap of agreement.

“So… you want me to follow you?”

That was a double rap this time, almost sounding impatient. God dammit, why did he never have a camera when ghosts were being this fucking obvious.

Okay, focus. “Shit…” On one hand, this could totally be some spirit fucking with him, some ghost set on leading him deeper into the fire and to his death. But as Coly reminded himself, there were ghosts of innocents in this house, ghosts of… of people just like him and Brennen.

And at the moment, he didn’t have a better plan.

“Okay… okay, I’ll follow you,” Colby said, gritting his teeth because it really was his only option. He didn’t have the time to just feel around for an exit. “You gotta… you gotta help me get him out of here.” And it was definitely because of the smoke inhalation that his voice cracked.

There was a rap again, in the same place, about ten feet in front of him. Colby swallowed, and pulled Brennen after him again.

Fortunately, whoever was helping him didn’t seem to be fucking with them. Colby would drag himself and Brennen to wherever the spirit had tapped, and the spirit would tap again in a new location, just a little bit further along than they had been. The air quality was improving. Colby hadn’t realized how oxygen deprived he was until the oxygen quality in the air improved.

His back ached, his hands were screaming at him, Brennen seemed to be getting heavier and heavier but he… he was getting somewhere.

When Colby saw the flashing lights in front of him he initially thought it was fire. That the spirit had led them into another room full of fire but then he looked at it, really looked at it through squinted, smoke burned eyes, and could see that the lights were flashing through windows.

He knew those lights. Those were emergency vehicle lights. He’d seen them before.

“Fuck, we made it…” He breathed, almost not believing it. “We made it, we…” And he really needed to get both Brennen and himself outside as quickly as possible, but he turned one more look into the house, murmuring, “Thank you. So much. You saved us.”

Colby heard one more rap, the tingling feeling across his neck feeling more like a friendly brush, before the feeling abandoned him entirely. Colby felt his way to the door, getting an almost numb hand around the handle and shoving it open.

The rush of fresh air into his lungs triggered another coughing fit. His lungs cramped up as his body tried to suck in as much oxygen as it could manage, making him choke again. And then he heard voices, voices calling out to him and asking questions, questions that he didn’t have answers to because the voices weren’t even registering as words.

“Wha-” The first pair of hands on him made him jump, and when someone tried to pull Brennen from him Colby shook his head furiously, “No, no, you can’t have him…”

“Easy kid, we’re EMS, we’re gonna help you guys okay?” Colby choked on another coughing fit, nodding instead in answer. “Okay, you with me?”

“Kinda…” Colby choked out.

“We’re gonna take care of you guys okay? We’re gonna get you to the hospital.”

Colby could hear all sorts of movement, voices asking questions and barking orders, the flashing lights almost overwhelming but he didn’t know where Brennen was and he needed… He needed Brennen… “Where’s Brennen?”

“We’re taking care of him, you’re both coming to the hospital with us… Can you track my finger with your eyes, son?”

Colby shook his head, coughing again as his eyes closed, “I can’t, I’m blind, is Brennen… is Brennen okay?”

Someone pushed something over his face. Colby flailed for a moment until oxygen filled his lungs and he realized what was going on. His own hand came up after that, holding the mask in place because holy shit, he forgot how good breathing was… 

“We’re taking care of him,” The voice told him, female this time he thought, “He’s breathing and he’s stable.”

“Oh thank God,” Colby breathed. The adrenaline of the whole escape from the house was finally wearing off, bringing with it a sort of bone deep exhaustion that was having Colby find himself struggling to stay conscious. He was suddenly aware of burning pain across his back, in his hands, on his stomach and knees. His lungs burned, not from lack of oxygen this time but from all the smoke he’d inhaled.

Fuck… he was gonna pass out.

“God, please take care of him…” He murmured, feeling the words from his lips come out garbled, “God, please…”

“We got you son, we got you, everything’s going to be okay…”

That was the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness.

The first thing he heard when he woke up next was Sam’s voice, quiet and somewhere right next to him. “Sam?” He croaked, not entirely sure the word made its way to verbal, but he must have said something, because Sam’s voice cut off.

“Hey, dude…” Sam’s voice was low. He sounded worried, and it took Colby a moment to remember what was going on. What had been going on. “How you feeling?”

“I…” And then it hit. The investigation, the house, the fire, dragging himself and Brennen from a burning building… “Brennen…” His voice came out as a harsh whisper. There was something over his face, and he flailed at it at first.

Something caught his hand, and Sam’s voice informed him, “They got an oxygen mask on you dude, to help you breathe. Don’t pull it off, okay? You’re in the hospital.”

Right. Oxygen. Hospital. That made sense. “I… fuck, sorry… Brennen?”

Sam squeezed the hand he’d caught, “He’ll be okay, man. Pretty badly burnt and something took a chunk out of his leg but he’ll be okay.”

“I… oh Thank God…” Colby let himself relax back into the bed. If Brennen was alive, that was the important part. “Fuck…” He shuddered. “Dude, I thought… Sam…”

“Hey, we’ll talk about it later,” Sam promised, “You’re pretty hurt.”

“I…” Fuck, okay. He was in the hospital. He’d made it out. Everything was okay. He paused for a moment before suddenly furrowing his brow. “Sam… Sam, I think there’s something wrong with my eyes.”

He could immediately feel the concern from Sam. “What? What’s wrong with them?”

“I can’t… I can’t see anything…” And he turned to Sam with a wide grin.

A pause, and then he heard Sam’s disbelieving snort. “Goddangit, Colby, you actually had me worried there for a moment.”

Colby chuckled a little bit, ignoring the way it ripped at his throat. “Sorry, had to.”

“You’re a piece of garbage.”

Colby swallowed on a dry throat, letting the grin fall from his face. “So… what’s the damage?”

He was burnt, he learned, with first degree burns just about everywhere. He had a couple of really awful second degree burns on his stomach and back, and on his hands from where he’d desperately felt their way out of that house. Of course, he hadn’t noticed them at the time but now that he felt safe and his body had time to process the pain… they fucking sucked.

And after he had spoken to his nurse and gotten some pain meds in his system (OxyContin was fantastic as he learned), Colby’s priorities shifted. “I wanna see Brennen.”

He heard the breath Sam took, “Dude, he’s still… I mean, he’s not awake yet, as far as I know. I think they’ve still got him drugged out. Jake and Lisa are with him.”

Colby shook his head. “Still wanna go see him, I gotta…” And even as he accepted Sam’s words, knew that Brennen was still unconscious… it didn’t change the urge to have Brennen’s hand pressed in between his, to feel his boyfriend, warm and living against him.

Because he had been so close to losing him.

Sam was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Once again, Colby was reminded of just how damn good Sam was at getting things from people. He wasn’t sure if it was Sam’s words or just how he came across to people, but before too long Sam and Colby had a nurse walking them down the hallway, helping Colby with his IV pole and new oxygen tank while Colby held onto Sam.

“Oh yeah, I’m gonna need a new cane…”

“We’ll get you one, dude, don’t worry…”

“And the camera got left behind… I think that was the good camera…”

“God dang it Colby…”

Colby knew they’d reached Brennen’s room when he heard Lisa Taylor’s voice, sounding overwhelmed but so, so happy to see him. “Colby…” He heard rapid footsteps approaching him, and then gentle arms thrown around him.

Colby winced as a few of his burns twinged, but he still lifted his arms to lightly hug Lisa back. “Hey, Lisa…”

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay…” Colby smiled. Since he and Brennen had been dating Lisa really had become like a second Mom to him. Brennen frequently joked that Lisa liked Colby better than she liked him.

Colby always just denied it, but it was good to have the LA based mom vibes sometimes.

Right then though, he had other priorities, “Brennen?” He asked, looking past Lisa’s shoulder as if he might be able to lay eyes on his boyfriend.

Lisa released him from the hug, but took his hand instead. “Over here,” She said.

Colby assumed someone was taking care of his IV pole, because the IV in his arm didn’t pull as Lisa led him. She pulled his hand downwards, and the instant Colby could feel warm, living skin under his hand he felt better. The tips of most of his fingers were bandaged due to the burns, but he could still flip his hand over and feel Brennen’s skin with the back of his hand.

He worked out fairly quickly Lisa had led him to an arm, and a quick skim with the back of his hand up Brennen’s arm to his chest revealed that Brennen was pretty heavily bandaged. But his chest still rose and fell with breath under Colby’s hand.

_ Oh thank God... _

He found Brennen’s face next, finding that his face had not been spared of bandages. “There’s no like… like his eyes are okay, right?” Colby couldn’t help the question, tracking the bandages and where they were across Brennen’s face. Because he’d thought he’d protected Brennen’s face from the worst of the dragging but maybe something had happened he couldn’t control… 

He felt bare eyelids as Jake answered. “Doctors didn’t mention anything about there being problems,” Jake said, his voice low. “So as far as we know, he’s fine.”

Colby pressed his lips together. Because he was fairly sure that Brennen had hit his head at some point, fairly sure that was why he’d passed out.

And the last time Colby had hit his head hard… he’d woken up blind.

But of course, he had no real reason to think that anything might be wrong. Just trauma, always present in his mind, and the desperate hope that Brennen would never have to go through what he had.

“What’s wrong with his leg?” Colby asked, distracting himself from his thoughts, “Sam said something about a chunk being taken out of it?”

“Yeah,” Jake picked up, and Colby heard someone, he thought it was Lisa, move back around the bed to sit down as he continued stroking Brennen’s face. “It’s all wrapped up now, but when I first got here like… like there’s a chunk missing out of his lower leg. The docs said that his leg must have caught on something and then it ripped out but uh… it’s a pretty big hole, like the size of a big banana…”

Colby was slowly remembering something though…

_ There was resistance, and then Brennen’s body was moving, and Colby thought he heard something ripping but that also could have been the crackle of the fire choking out his other sensory input… _

And then he immediately felt awful. “Oh fuck…” Colby breathed, “I think I did that…”

“What?” He could sense the confused looks on him.

“We fell through the ceiling and then he was… he was stuck, and we were in the kitchen and it was on fire and I had to, I had to pull him really hard because he was stuck under something and…” His stomach was sinking into the floor, “I bet I ripped the chunk out of his leg when I did that…” His chest was tight, “Oh fuck, I… fuck… I’m so sorry...”

It was Lisa who spoke next, even as Colby felt what he was pretty sure was Sam’s hand on his shoulder. “Okay, so he’s in the hospital with a fucked up leg,” Lisa said, her voice tight with emotion, “I’d rather pay for his rehab than his funeral.”

“Dude, you were escaping a burning house,” Sam reminded him quietly, confirming his touching theory. “I’m sure Brennen won’t blame you when he wakes up.”

“Fuck…” Colby murmured, still feeling awful. “I…” But he swallowed down the words he could say, just asking instead, “When will he wake up?”

“I think they’re still drugging him right now,” Lisa said, “So… as soon as they stop that, I guess.” Worry perfused her voice.

Colby nodded, “And when are they stopping that?” He paused, “How long has it been since we got rescued?” As he realized he had no idea how long he’d been out.

“They brought you guys in super early this morning, like 6 am I think…” Sam answered, “At least, that’s when I got a call. It’s about noon now.”

Colby nodded. It hadn’t even been that long since all of this had happened.

He swayed on his feet suddenly, feeling awfully lightheaded. Sam grabbed his shoulders while he heard Lisa stand quickly. “Here, he can have my seat.”

Colby was reluctant to relinquish his contact with Brennen, still feeling all too potently that fear of losing him. However, when his balance threatened to give out again, he seceded to what his body needed.

He had just almost died, after all.

Apparently they’d been waiting on the results of his MRI, as they had been worried about swelling in his brain or some sort of brain damage from the fall. But once that came back just reading a minor concussion, thank god, the doctor gave the all clear to hold the sedatives.

Colby was still in the room when they turned Brennen’s sedatives off. He’d refused to leave for anything other than med pass and vitals, and after another round of pain meds had actually passed out for a little bit, his hand resting on Brennen’s chest.

Unfortunately, Brennen’s return to consciousness was anything but peaceful. The first words out of Brennen’s mouth were a vehement swear of pain. “Oh, son of a motherfucker…”

Brennen seized under Colby’s hand, and Colby, who’d been dozing just slightly, was immediately awake.

He stood, pressing his hands to Brennen’s cheeks and talking at him as he heard everyone else around him move too, “We’re okay, baby, you’re okay, we’re in the hospital, we got out, we’re okay…”

Brennen’s hands had come up to grip at Colby’s wrists where they touched his face. “Everything fucking hurts,” Brennen ground out, his voice shredded and tight in what sounded like absolute agony.

“Nurse!” Jake was up, moving from the room and calling for Brennen’s nurse.

“Fuck!” Brennen’s whole body shuddered and Colby felt the whole bed shake, “Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck!” His grip on Colby tightened to be almost painful. “Everything fucking hurts, baby, please…”. That last sentence broke on a sob.

Colby’s heart broke, feeling how Brennen’s face was twisted under his hands. “Baby, I’m sorry… we’re getting your nurse, we’re gonna get you some meds, okay?”

“Fucking  _ hurts _ …”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.” Because he knew how badly his own burns hurt, only dulled by the pain meds. He knew Brennen’s burns were worse, and he had the whole hole in the leg to contend with.

“Fuuuck…” Brennen pushed his face into Colby’s hand and shook. He didn’t speak again, but the pained whimpers, groans, and occasional cries that he couldn’t stifle still broke his heart.

When the nurse finally walked in with Brennen’s meds, Brennen ground out his name and date of birth through a clamped jaw, and hands still tight on Colby. She pushed something into his IV first, which fortunately seemed to kick in pretty quickly. Brennen seemed at least a little less pain stricken when he finally relinquished his grip on Colby so that he could take the pills he was prescribed. 

Colby still hated to hear the pain his boyfriend’s voice was all too tight with.

Brennen seemed a little bit better, or at least, no longer in agonizing pain when he finally let up on his death grip on Colby’s wrists. “Fuck…” He felt Brennen’s head turn in his direction. “Hey, baby…”

“Hey baby…” Colby swallowed down the thickness in his throat. “How you doing?”

“Everything… everything hurts...” Brennen commented, and his voice was as fucked as Colby’s. “But I can… it's a little better...” He seemed super out of it. Which was probably for the better, Colby thought. Anything to keep him from feeling the pain that Colby had heard and felt from him earlier.

Brennen paused for a moment, and then said, “Oh, hey guys.”

The other three people in the room responded. Colby wasn’t sure why he felt some sort of massive relief drop off his shoulders until he realized that this alleviated his fear that Brennen’s vision had been damaged. If Brennen could see all the people in the room, he was fine.

Thank fuck.

Colby could be okay with his own blindness and still pray that Brennen never had to go through the same thing.

“We’re in a… we’re in a hospital?” Brennen’s voice was spacey.

“Yeah,” Colby said, and he heard Brennen make a sudden hiss of pain.

“Why does everything hurt?”

Colby grimaced, “Because I had to drag you out of a burning house. You’re pretty… you’re pretty hurt.”

He heard a snort from Brennen, “You’re pretty too…” He felt air move past his face, heard a frustrated noise from Brennen, before a petulant, “Why is your face so far away? Come here so I can kiss you.”

Colby grinned a little bit despite himself. Because he knew the reason why Brennen was so drugged out, knew why he was acting like this, and he hated it, he really did but… this was kinda cute.

Colby let his hand drift up to cup Brennen’s face softly, using it to guide his mouth so that he could place a gentle kiss on Brennen’s lips. He heard a pleased hum from Brennen, and hands falling in some strange, uncoordinated way to grab at him, followed by a muttered “Ow…”

“Careful, please,” Colby heard Lisa comment, and Colby was reminded that they were not alone in the room.

So Colby drew back from Brennen just a little bit, the burns on his back and stomach reminding him that he should not be bent over a bed like this. “No, hey, come back,” He heard Brennen complain.

“I’m right here babe,” Colby found a less thickly bandaged area of his chest to rest a hand. “Right here.” He swallowed, before murmuring out through a thick throat. “I’m not going anywhere…”

It took several days before Brennen’s pain was anywhere near manageable enough that they didn’t have to keep him drugged up on medications that made him too loopy to function. Of course, Colby preferred the stoned-out-of-his-mind Brennen to the crying-into-his-chest Brennen when the medications were reaching their end and no longer controlling his pain properly.

Brennen was… fuck, Colby hadn’t realized how hurt Brennen was. Because while Colby had been able to keep most of his body off the floor and away from burning things, unconscious Brennen had had no such ability. The whole of his back was scraped and burned to hell, and his leg…

Brennen’s leg was fucked, there was no way around it. Not only was a massive chunk of flesh and muscle missing, the doctors’ theory was that a burning beam had fallen on it, so the flesh around the wound was also burnt all to hell. There were some terrifying conversations for a bit, where his care team had discussed the possibility of Brennen actually losing his leg.

Fortunately, when the wound team came around the grafts seemed to be taking, so they dismissed the option.

Obviously, Colby never, ever would have wished the amount of pain and suffering he knew Brennen was feeling on him, but he had to say… it was nice for once to not be the one everyone was worried about.

One night, later, after Jake and Lisa and Sam had all gone home for the day, Colby was still in Brennen’s room. He was flipping absently through his phone when he heard Brennen’s choked gasp as his boyfriend came to awareness from his drugged out sleep. Colby heard the couple of quick gasps as he came to awareness of the pain his body was in, and then a deliberate inhale and exhale.

Colby knew the breathing pattern. He knew his boyfriend.

The pain was bad.

“Hey…” Colby murmured, letting Brennen know that he was awake.

“Hey…” Brennen’s voice was no longer as fucked, but Colby knew he was still on oxygen, his lungs still healing from the sheer amount of smoke that he’d inhaled. Colby still felt bad about that. Even though he’d been told repeatedly by Lisa, and Jake, and Sam, and Brennen, that he’d done the only thing he could do in that situation.

“How you feeling?” Maybe it was a stupid question, but Brennen didn’t immediately shut him down.

“Like shit…” Brennen answered, his voice tight with pain. “Think the uh… think I’m due for pain meds.”

Colby tapped at his new phone to wake it up, holding it up so Brennen could see. “What time does it say?” Sam had brought him the phone earlier that day. He was still getting it set up with all the adaptations that he needed. 

“One-thirty.”

Colby winced, “Yeah, you’re due in about fifteen minutes.” He put the phone down. “Sorry.”

“Fuck…” Colby heard Brennen shift in his bed. “Fucking hurts…” At least Brennen never tried to hide his pain from Colby. Colby appreciated that.

“I’m so sorry, babe…” Colby murmured, finding Brennen’s cheek with his fingertips.

“I’ll be okay…” Brennen muttered, “I’ll… oh fuck, my leg…”

“I’m sorry…” Colby said again.

“I told you before,” Brennen said, and Colby heard him sigh, “I’d rather have a fucked leg than be dead.”

“Yeah, I know…”. There was quiet for a moment, Colby listening to the sound of Brennen’s breathing and the beeping of the various machines that he was hooked up to.

“So… while I’m still sober enough to think…” Brennen started. “Because the drugs help but I can’t fuckin’ think uh… how the fuck did we get out?” Colby drew his attention back to Brennen, feeling the breath his lungs sucked in-

_ The breaths that had been so hard to draw from that smokey, superheated air… _

“I mean, so like…” Brennen was still talking, “The last thing I remember is falling through the floor and then…” He shuddered under Colby’s hand. “And then I hurt, and then everything was on fire, and then I passed out.” 

Colby grimaced. “Shit…” But it made a lot of sense that that would be the last bit Brennen remembered. It just brought him back rather unpleasantly to everything else that had happened, his own wounds and trauma that he was still nursing.

Brennen’s hand came up to stroke at Colby’s. “How did we get out of there? What the fuck like, even happened?”

Colby chewed on the inside of his lip. He’d tried not to think too much about that night since they were rescued. But Brennen deserved to know, so he’d tell him. “I like…” He sighed, “So… we fell into the kitchen, right? I burned myself on the fridge, that’s how I figured it out.” He grinned a little bit, and he heard a huff of air from Brennen. “You uh… you made some sort of noise. Otherwise I never would have found you, it was so so fucking hot and smoky in that room…”

“I don’t remember that…” Brennen said hesitantly. “But uh… glad I could help?”

Colby chuckled a little bit, squeezing Brennen’s hand. “Glad you did…” He swallowed recalling this next part, feeling the pain and the panic of the moment come back to him. “You were uh… You were pinned under some of the roof, I think, and I had to… I had to pull you free. That’s why your leg is fucked, but you knew that.”

“Yeah…” He felt Brennen shift under him, wondering what Brennen’s leg looked like, if Brennen could even see it.

“Sorry…” Colby said again, quickly, “I didn’t… I didn’t think that I might be hurting you, I just…”

“Hey, you’re good,” Brennen cut him off quickly. “I’m not dead. I fucking… fucking passed out and left you alone in a burning house.” There was some self-condemnation in his voice, “Left my fucking blind boyfriend alone…”

“Oh no, how dare you pass out after falling a story and getting a concussion,” Colby deadpanned, trying to turn the conversation around because shit, he never wanted Brennen blaming himself for any of this. “I got us out. It was… it was really fucking close, but… I did.”

“So… How  _ did _ you get us out?” Brennen asked quietly. He squeezed Colby’s hand and waited.

Colby took a breath to answer, and then released it, swallowing. Brennen wouldn’t think he was crazy. Brennen had been there too. “So… I think one of the ghosts helped me.”

Brennen had clearly not been expecting that. “What?”

“I think one of the ghosts helped me,” Colby repeated. “Like, I heard the basement door open, and that at least got me out of the kitchen but…” He bit the inside of his mouth for a moment, “Then I heard this tapping noise. And like, I didn’t know what to do about it at first, because I thought it was just noises and then… then it responded to my questions, and… and it would tap where I needed to go.” It sounded crazy now that he said it out loud.

But Brennen didn’t call him crazy, he just made a soft noise of acknowledgement. “Guess one of the good ghosts helped us out,” Brennen said.

Colby nodded. “Yeah, makes me wonder if like…” He lowered his voice, voicing a thought he hadn’t yet given validity to by speaking aloud, “If it was one of the gay guys they murdered, helping us out.”

He heard a considering, “Huh,” From Brennen. “Yeah. Yeah, you know, that would be pretty cool.”

Colby nodded, feeling a faint smile tug across his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, it would be.”

They got a call from John about a week after the fire. They’d gotten Brennen up to the chair at his bed side, his hand in Colby’s as they both looked out the window. Colby’d been officially discharged about two days ago. Brennen still needed supervision. They’d been told he’d be there for another week at least.

“Unknown number,” Colby’s phone chirped, and Colby frowned, looking at the brightness of his screen.

“Probably spam,”Brennen offered. His voice was tight again. Colby knew he was due for another round of pain meds soon.

Colby squeezed Bennen’s hand, but picked up the call anyway. “Hello?”

A familiar voice came from the other end. “Hello, this is John, I’m calling from the Bauer estate, is this Colby?”

Colby sat up immediately straighter. “Speaking.” He navigated on his phone until he could turn the speaker on. “Brennen’s here too.”

“How are you two doing?” John sounded worried. Not that Colby could blame him. “I heard you two were inside the house when it caught fire?”

“Yeah,” Colby swallowed, feeling Brennen squeeze his hand. “We made it out, thank God. Brennen’s pretty hurt, but the doctors say he’s gonna be okay.”

“All thanks to you,” Brennen said, and his voice was pitched so that Colby knew the words were only targeted at him. Colby tossed a soft smile at his boyfriend.

Fuck… he’d been so close to losing him...

“Yeah, thank God,” John said. “I couldn’t find your numbers or I would have called sooner.”

“We didn’t have phones for a bit, so no worries,” Colby said, “Is Hansel okay? He was in the house too, right?”

“Yes, he was,” John said, “Lucky for him, his room is on the first floor. I think he hopped out a window when he realized what was going on. He is…  _ we _ are so sorry this happened.” John sounded genuinely distressed.

“What did happen?” Colby asked, “Did they ever find out what started the fire?”

There was quiet for a moment before Colby and Brennen got an answer. “They’re not sure,” John said. “Best guess they’ve got is some sort of wire malfunction, but that’s…” He heard a discontented noise on the other end of the phone, “I mean… to my knowledge the wiring in the house was fine and uh…”

“And that’s what killed Hansel’s grandfather,” Brennen added, and he sounded like he was looking directly at Colby. Colby swallowed, and he thought he knew the implications behind Brennen’s words.

That maybe ghosts had been behind it. Maybe ghosts had tried to kill them too.

John seemed to not know what to say. “Yeah,” He just said quietly.

There was a moment of quiet between the three, Colby’s brain pulling at everything that had happened, everything that they knew, drawing connections.

If the ghosts of the house really had tried to kill them, well… they’d come damn close. Colby was just grateful that there had been one of them who had helped them survive. Because without their efforts… Colby, and most certainly Brennen, might have died.

“The place is mostly ruined,” John continued, and Colby brought his attention back to the conversation. “Hansel and I have been discussing whether we want to try to restore it or just demolish it.”

Brennen made some kind of irritated noise that Colby immediately knew the meaning of. Colby took a breath and released it. Because he’d had the same initial reaction. “That’s up to you guys…” Colby said quietly, “But uh… if you want our opinion,” Because he was fairly sure that he and Brennen shared the same opinion. “Might be time to just wipe it clean and rebuild.”

There was a pause, and then a, “Yeah, uh... We’re kinda on the same page.”

The conversation wrapped up not too long after that, Brennen and Colby wishing the two well. While the house certainly needed to go, neither of them bore any ill will towards the two men who ran it.

“So… we just had some ghosts try to kill us?” Brennen asked, after his nurse had brought him a new round of pain meds. “That’s what we agree happened, right?” His voice was still a little loopy, but they’d decreased his meds ever so slightly so that he was slightly more functional when drugged.

Colby nodded, then paused. “I guess?”

“I mean, that the same shit happened as forty fucking years ago? And with them already hurting you…” Colby heard the shrug in Brennen’s voice. “Makes sense, right?”

Colby gave half a grin, “If you believe in that kind of stuff.”

He heard the answering grin when Brennen said back, “If you believe in that kind of stuff.”

“So…” Colby tried to summarize, “We had what were probably Nazi ghosts try to kill us, and then… then we had a different ghost save us.”

“Mhmm,” Brennen hummed an agreement. “Sounds about right to me.”

Colby snorted, “If I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t believe it.”

“You’re not wrong,” Brennen let out an exhale. “Kinda sucks we lost the footage. Lot of fucking shit happened.”

Colby nodded. “Yeah. Well, at least you’ll get to do weekly “how my leg is healing” videos.”

Brennen let out a disgruntled sound. “That’s gonna take months…”

“Yeah, and I’m going to make sure you don’t try to get up and fuck yourself up in the meantime,” Colby asserted, sending a pointed glare Brennen’s way.

“I’d never…”

“Bullshit.”

Brennen groaned, and Colby thought that was the end of it until Brennen started. “Wait, shit… oh no…”

“What?” Colby demanded, immediately worried again.

“I’m gonna have a really hard time fucking you with my leg and back like this.”

For a moment, Brennen’s words didn’t compute, because Colby had thought that Brennen was going to say something actually serious. Once he’d actually registered the words, he just grinned.

“I can think of some shit to do while you’re healing,” He stepped forward from his sitting location to lean into Brennen’s space. Searching fingers found Brennen’s neck, taking advantage of the sensitivity he knew his boyfriend had there. “I can always ride you, I know you love when I do that…”

“Mhmm…” He heard Brennen’s pleased groan. He tucked a knee to Brennen’s side, careful not to actually put any weight on Brennen when he knelt over his lap. Nuzzling into Brennen’s neck, he let his hands twist into his hair. “I can still suck your dick, or hell, eat your ass. You told me you really liked that too.”

“I am wearing a hospital gown, you monster,” Brennen complained, letting out a choked little moan when Colby’s tongue pressed against a tendon in his neck.

Colby chuckled, “S’not my problem you’re so goddamn sensitive…” His hands crept down to Brennen’s groin, massaging the rapidly hardening flesh he found there.

“I mean… I have always wanted to have sex in the hospital room,” Brennen commented, groaning again and gripping hands into Colby’s hips. “Goddammit, babe, how are you so hot that I can be covered in burns and still have a boner?”

“Oh God dammit.” That was Sam’s voice, and Colby just burst out laughing. Apparently they had a visitor.

“Sorry, Sam,” Brennen at least had the decency to sound sheepish, but Colby could care less.

Sam should have knocked. “Should have knocked, bro!”

“Sorry if I thought that you two being in the hospital would slow you down at least a little,” Sam complained, and Colby heard him shift on his feet. He could picture the rolled eyes, the crossed arms.

“Not a chance,” Colby fired back, hopping off of Brennen. “You need a blanket, babe?”

“Yeah, probably…”

“Did  _ not _ need to hear that!”

“Because I’m cold, Sam, obviously.”

Colby heard Sam’s groan. He tossed Brennen the blanket he knew was draped over the chair he’d been sitting in. “You can come in,” Brennen called, a few moments after fussing with the blanket.

Colby heard Sam’s footsteps move into the room and heard another snort from Brennen. “His face,” Brennen explained at Colby’s quizzical look.

Colby grinned too.

“How’re you guys doing?” Sam asked, and Colby heard him come to sit down in one of the other chairs in the room.

“A little high, but that’s Percocet for you,” Brennen replied, and Colby could hear the grin in his voice.

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, “I think that’s what they gave me when I broke my back last year. Good shit.”

“No shit.”

“So, one of the caretakers called us,” Colby filled Sam in, “I guess the fire mostly destroyed the house, or like, did a ton of damage.” He shrugged, “Sounds like they’re gonna demolish it, start over.”

“Shit…” Sam muttered, “I saw the pictures. That place was huge. Must have been a really big fire to do that much damage.” He huffed a noise, “Still can’t believe you guys got out.”

“Neither can I sometimes…” Colby said quietly. “There were times when I was sure I wasn’t gonna make it.”

“But you did,” Brennen reminded him, stroking the back of his hand. “My fuckin’ badass boyfriend.” His voice was softer when he added, “I never doubted you.”

Colby felt a smile grow slowly across his face. Because he’d had so many frustrations, so many insecurities the day they’d been at the house. But he’d gotten them out. Fucking blind and all he’d gotten them out. He hadn’t just given up. And because of that he could sit here today, holding his boyfriend’s hand, and apparently traumatizing his best friend.

That was pretty badass, huh?

“So, anyway,” Sam started. “Stacy called a little bit earlier. Wanted some input on something. You good to talk channel shit?”

Colby nodded. “Yeah, sure,” He said, “Babe, you good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brennen said, sounding unconcerned, “Go for it. I might take a nap. Drugs are finally kicking in.”

Colby found a fond smile growing across his lips. “Okay, we can head out into the lobby so you can sleep,” Colby said. “You wanna get back in bed?”

“Honestly, I don’t want to move,” Brennen answered, and Colby heard him adjust in the chair. “Just hand me a pillow and I’ll be good.”

“Yeah, sure.” Sam said. Colby heard what sounded like pillows and blankets shifting, and then he stood, holding out a hand for Sam to guide him. A hand gripped his, guiding it to Sam’s shoulder. “I’ll be back, okay?”

“Yeah, no worries,” Brennen already sounded like he was starting to drift off, not atypical after his meds. “Love you.”

“Love you too.” And he and Sam headed out. He grabbed his cane, sitting by the door, and turned to Sam as his friend steered them out of the room and down the hall.

Just like normal. Back to business.

“So… what did you have in mind?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it’s done!
> 
> Honestly, I’ve had the fire scene floating around in my head for months (like since May or something) but I never had the motivation to write a whole story around it.
> 
> Until now. And this whole story poured itself out over the space of a week.
> 
> Sorry for any inaccuracies about how fire and burning houses work. I know I’ve taken some creative liberties and I’m sure there’s some plot armor but uh... I did my best.
> 
> Please let me know what you think, reviews seriously make my entire day and a lot of work went into this piece.
> 
> Alright, as always, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one!


End file.
